The Current - Where does the U.S. go from here?

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

What does Donald Trump’s victory tell us about the state of the United States, and its future? Matt Galloway talks to historians Carol Anderson and Jill Lepore about how the economy, class, race and gender played into this election — and where things go from here. 

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. It was not the speech she hoped to give. Kamala Harris conceded the election to Donald Trump yesterday afternoon, promising that the Biden administration would engage in a peaceful transfer of power. A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny. And anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time, in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States. This historic election says a lot about the state of the United States and its future.

Carol Anderson is an historian and the author of White Rage, the Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. She's also a professor of African American Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. And Jill Lepore is an historian at Harvard University, a staff writer at The New Yorker. She's the author of, among other books, These Truths, A History of the United States. And she also hosted a podcast for the BBC focusing on Elon Musk.

She is in Vermont this morning. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Carol, a former advisor to George W. Bush called this election a cat scan on the American people. What does this election do you think say about your country now? It says that we have a large swath of very angry, angry white men and white women who are aligned with patriarchy, with sexism, and with racism. And it says that they are energized.

They are afraid of the incredible diversity of this nation. They are afraid of the incredible strengths and change that diversity will bring. And they are afraid of becoming a minority. diversity will bring. And they are afraid of becoming a minority. And so this was their last stand to basically vote in a man who is a convicted felon, a man who is an adjudicated rapist, a man who is a liar, a proven liar, a man who his cabinet officials basically said, do not reelect this man. He is unfit. He is unstable. He has strong fascist tendencies. So it says that none of that mattered, but what mattered was white supremacy. I want to come back to that in a moment. Jill, you've had a day or so to digest these results. Your book, These Truths, is in many ways about the myths and the stories that America is built around.

What do you think the story this election tells about America is? Well, I think a chief part of the story is the failure of the Democratic Party, really, in the 20th century, to deliver policies that relieve the suffering of working class people in the United States. I think that, you know, Biden actually had some really effective policies and programs. Kamala Harris did not have a policy program for the country that spoke to those voters. And I would disagree to some degree with Professor Anderson's comments, given the extent of Black and Latino support for Trump. Really, I think, caught the Democrats by surprise.

They've taken those voters for granted, Black men, Latino men for granted for decades now. And I think there's a reckoning necessary for the Democratic Party in the aftermath of this loss. When people say to you, and I want to come back to Carol on that, when people say to you in the wake of a result like this, this isn't the United States, how do you respond? Because when that number of people, that scale of people vote for Donald Trump, it is the United States, isn't it? people, that scale of people vote for Donald Trump. It is the United States, isn't it? It is the United States. And so part of what we're looking at is the way that we have an information ecosystem that just flattened, that told a series of lies over and over and over again that became the truth. So part of that truth was that the economy was teetering,

the economy was awful, that people were struggling, except for in a moment where unemployment is really low, where inflation has gone down. But part of what you're hearing, and so part of this is the work that the Biden administration had done in order to deal with the catastrophe of the Trump regime. And, but you got a narrative that the economy was not working. And yeah, we heard that from people when we were out. People felt that they were struggling. They would go to put gas in their tank

and they would be shocked at how much it cost. And to Jill's point, I mean, it wasn't just white men and women that voted for Trump, that he increased his share of votes among black men in particular, among Latinos. What do you make of that? And remember, so part of what I talked about not only was racism, but misogyny. And so that is part of what we're hearing. What we're hearing is that, And so that is part of what we're hearing. What we're hearing is that. So there was a pollster who was working with Latino men and they were like, there is no way a woman can run the country. There is just no way that a woman could run the country. And you're hearing from from black men that, well, she was a prosecutor.

She was just locking up the brothers. She was just locking up the brothers. And that became a narrative that was out there, but it wasn't based on truth. And so part of what we're looking at is an information biosphere that has separated reality from truth, from fact, from evidence. Jill Lepore, how much of a role did gender play in this election? evidence. Jill Lepore, how much of a role did gender play in this election? We talked on this program and there's been a lot written about the gender gap in the vote leading up to election day. When you take a look at the results such as they are right now, what does that say to you? So the gender gap in American politics between 1920 when women got the vote in the United States and 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected president always was a small gap and it always favored the Republican Party,

which endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment beginning in the 1940s. That changed with Reagan's election. Reagan came to power in 1980 campaigning against the Equal Rights Amendment, which was then defeated in 1982. A lot of people don't realize this. The United States doesn't have an equal rights provision in its constitution. And Reagan came to power on the back of a conservative movement led by women, by the brilliant conservative strategist Phyllis Schlafly, to defeat the ERA and also to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision

that constitutionalized abortion in 1973. And at that point, the gender gap switched. And so since 1980, women have voted, were more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate than for the Republican candidate. And the expectation, and that's been fine with Republicans who basically have had the idea that they'd gladly take white men and lose white women and fight different fights. And that's largely how it's come to pass. It's been a fairly incremental shift. The expectation with Harris's campaign was that this long gender gap that's now some decades old would become a gender chasm, that the 2022 returning of Roe v. Wade would drive women

who had traditionally voted Republican, would finally drive those sort of last white women away from the Republican Party and that didn't turn out to be the case. There was a sizable gender gap but it was not the gender chasm that was anticipated and I think that had to do with there are a lot of, you know, it had to do with this sort of terrifying approach to talking about women that the Trump Vance campaign engaged in but it also had to do with this sort of terrifying approach to talking about women that the Trump Vance campaign engaged in.

But it also had to do with underestimating the power of conservative women in this country and also to do with the way in which just as the Democratic Party has so long taken for granted black and Latino voters, it has taken women for granted. And the ad campaigns run by the Democratic Party were unbelievably contemptuous of women. And taken the working class, some people have said, for granted as well. And I mean, this goes back to the issue that you talked about when it came to people feeling let down by the Democratic Party. The exit polls suggest, and this is what you hear from people, is that the economy, whether that's true or not, that the economy was the top of the priority list for many people. Donald Trump's a billionaire. And yet he was able to tell people that he had their backs.

How do you think, Jill, he managed to do that? I think there is, you know, Trump, I will confess, you know, is a horrifying prospect. The prospect of him returning to power is horrifying. He's an incredibly dangerous political force, both in the United States and around the world. There's a great

deal to be concerned about. But I think that the chief message to his supporters has been since 2015, you can't possibly be stupid enough to vote for this guy. You don't understand all the ways in which he is dangerous. You don't understand, you know, the economy is just fine. He will make your life where he doesn't actually care about you. He will make your life worse. You know, it's the condescension to the voter that I think, and sort of the worst Trump behaves, and he understands this dynamic exquisitely well, the worse he behaves, the more his opponents will say, how can people be so stupid just to vote for this person? And then the more condescended to they feel and the less understood they feel by people that have, that in fact, you know, democratic policies do have, have their best interests in mind relative to the Republican

party. So, um, I, I think there's this, uh, quite vicious circle that works extremely well for Trump. circle that works extremely well for Trump. The way in which it's baffling, I think, to reporters, it's baffling to political commentators, it's baffling to Democrats that people can still support him, but it's his very outrageousness that contributes to that support. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs.

We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Carol, how do you understand,

part of this is about the message that the Democrats put forward on Donald Trump being a threat to democracy. Why didn't that stick with voters, do you think? I think part of it is the history of American exceptionalism, the kind of sense that, oh, that can't happen here. Oh, that's an exaggeration. Or if it happens, it won't affect me. That kind of sense of that's somebody, that's going to be somebody else. You know, that's what happened in Nazi Germany. That's not here. And I think that that was part of it. And I think the other part of it

is the kind of historical amnesia we have. And that historical amnesia doesn't even have to go back 50 years or 100 years. It's that kind of historical amnesia that ignores that in his first administration, in his first presidency term, his first term, that he weakened a lot of the labor laws, OSHA. So the standards for what can happen in the workplace. And so you saw workplace deaths go up and you saw the weakening of the access to health insurance happening. So people were getting injured, but they weren't getting the health insurance that they needed in order to get well. We forget that in the tariff wars that that he had with China over soybeans, that it almost led to the bankruptcy, the collapse of farmers in Iowa. bankruptcy, the collapse of farmers in Iowa, and they had to be bailed out at $28 billion in order to make up for the loss of Chinese goods, the Chinese buying the soybeans. So it is also ignoring or forgetting what happened during COVID, the massive mismanagement of that pandemic

that led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. And Jill is right that there is this thing, you know, and it's psychological. Ruth Ben-Gayat talks about this with strongmen, is that one of the things that happens is that when somebody believes the strong man, believes the lie, and then to be told that it's a lie, they double down on supporting the strong man because it then means that they had bad judgment. And so to have to own that just does something to the sense of self, the sense of identity. And so it's the doubling down on the really bad decision and staying with that. And I don't think there was condescension, really. I saw the way that organized labor rallied around Harris. And I saw the way that the Infrastructure Act and all of the building that is happening here is putting folks to work in really good

paying jobs. And the way that the CHIPS Act has increased manufacturing, and so people are having great jobs. And the way that they were emphasizing apprenticeship programs. So there were policies in place and policies that were proposed that really would address the economic needs of the working class. And yet people didn't see that they would apply to them, that they would help their lives. Right, right. Instead, what we got were tariffs, and we got a sense that the tax cuts for the billionaires would continue. And we got a sense that what he was providing, basically, what W.E.B. Du Bois called the wages of whiteness, which is that kind of sense of kind of racial solidarity, a racial superiority that doesn't provide a lot of the physical needs, the physical comforts, but provides the kind of psychological, psychological boost, this kind of psychological drug that makes you feel empowered. Jill, let me ask you about one of those billionaires. Elon Musk is a key factor in

this election. He bet big on Trump. Donald Trump has suggested he could be in his cabinet as the secretary of cost cutting. People have called him the most powerful unelected man ever. You did a podcast about him, The Evening Rocket, to try to in some ways explain Elon Musk. What do you think he stands to gain from the win of Donald Trump? You know, Musk doesn't need anything. Musk is in thrall to himself. And Trump is another way for him to see his power reflected back at him. And, you know, it's exhausting. I really found it fascinating to do this series on Musk some years ago before people were really

paying attention to Musk. But it's also exhausting. I mean, the man is just a bottomless pit of of a kind of desperate need for greater and greater power. And Trump has that same neediness. I think they will surely have a very dramatic histrionic falling out. We will be asked to be spectators to the soap opera of their relationship. But in the meantime, they will together bring about terrible, terrible suffering for the poorest and the weakest among us, of whom they have, in whose interest they have no concern whatsoever. Do you think, I mean, we've talked about media, and you've written about this extensively. I mean, X, Twitter, people have said is in many ways now one of the most powerful venues for conservative

thought. Do you think that that will play a role in the country to come? Yeah, I mean, I wrote a piece for The New Yorker this week called The Artificial State, in which I make a kind of long view historical argument that we no longer live in the United States in a liberal democratic state, whose purpose is to make citizens. We live in the United States in a liberal democratic state whose purpose is to make citizens. We live in an artificial state whose purpose is to create trolls. And the artificial state is not a conspiracy. It's not some crackpot theory like the deep state. It's really just the reality of the digital infrastructure that is entirely corporate owned that controls the flow of information. And, you know, to Carol's point about how difficult it is to

break through the messaging of, you know, the insanity of Trump's understanding of the world. And I would say equally the kind of craziness of a highly polarized and charged understanding of the world on the other end of the political spectrum. That is all driven by communications infrastructure that's owned by corporations who, as we all know, have, you know, profit from extremism polarization. They profit from making people angry. And, you know, Musk directly has a sort of very clear interest in Trump's ascendancy and supported it with every inch of his power but i think we would do well to understand that the artificial state has a decades-long history you know started in the late 1950s and and americans have seeded bit by bit um their capacity to act in civil institutions

and as a civil society to corporate interests that's happening around the world. Something like the CBC is, you know, one of the last important bastions of a kind of civil society institution that has an independent means of communicating with the public. So what do you just, we just have a minute or so left. Carol, what do you do about that? I mean, is there a way for a less polarized America to be on the horizon, given everything that you've been talking about? I think it begins basically at the grassroots.

It begins in our schools. It begins in our communities. It begins in talking with each other. It begins in working to have a society that believes in evidence, that believes in facts, that knows how to make the kinds of discernment about truth and lies. And so it begins in our civic institutions. It begins in our community institutions. It begins with our neighbors. It's going to be at the grassroots where this change has to happen. It can't come from above.

Jill, very briefly, that sounds, I think, to a lot of people far-fetched right now, given where we are. The idea of talking to people, but also believing in facts. Yeah, you know, there are a lot of organizations, nonprofits in the U.S. today that are bridging organizations that are trying to help bring people together across political divides for democratic deliberation. I think it's a set of skills that are had in classrooms, in K-12 classrooms as public school teachers who are doing the really vital and important work, as Carol says, of bringing people together to figure out what's true and what's not true and how to disagree with one another. We need a lot more institutions than K-12 classrooms for that to thrive. I'm always glad to talk to you both.

Thank you very much for being here this morning. Thank you so much. Carol Anderson is an historian and author of White Rage, The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. She's a professor of African American Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Jill Lepore is an historian at Harvard University, staff writer at The New Yorker, and the author of, among others, These Truths. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.