The NPR Politics Podcast - What Democratic Organizers Are Learning From 2024

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

After a difficult 2024 cycle, activists working to elect Democratic candidates are rethinking their playbooks for the next elections. Many organizers, including Black women, are strategizing ways to improve their coalition building.This episode: voting correspondents Miles Parks & Ashley Lopez, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han and Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is the team of the Aspen Institute Germany in Berlin. We are just finishing up a great program with our special guest Sarah McKenna. This podcast was recorded at 1 o' 9 p.m. on December 5th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we'll still be working to strengthen the transatlantic relationship. the transatlantic relationship. Okay, here's the show. Are we supposed to know who they're talking about? Look at Sarah making it across the pond. Hope the trip was good.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I also cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. And today on the show, progressive activists are tired. Ashley, your recent reporting focused specifically on black women organizers. They mobilized this year in great numbers to try to elect the first black woman president. Obviously, that was not successful.

How are they feeling now in the couple weeks after the election? Yeah. And so I just want to say, I talked to black women organizers specifically because I you know I don't know how many people know this but in a lot of progressive spaces black women have played a key role in that They build very big coalitions with lots of different kinds of voters. So Latinos young people the working poor They're one of the biggest forces of organizing constituencies that the Democrats tend to rely on a lot in elections. So I was wondering how they were feeling because there was this sort of like personal situation they were in, which is they were helping elect the first black woman to be president.

And so coming out of this election, what I heard a lot from these organizers is that they're worn out, tired, as you mentioned, sad, and you know, a little angry too. You know, not only did a lot of these voters who they work with not support and kind of vote against the progressive policies that they're sort of pushing for and rallying their voters around, they voted for Trump who has basically promised the polar opposite of all of those policy goals, but they also cast their ballots against a Black woman. So this feels personal in a way that no other election in their lifetime really

ever has. And so, you know, a lot of these Black female political organizers told me they feel like voters who they've been looking out for simply don't have their back in the same way. So they're just like looking at the work they do, and they just feel, you know, kind of beat down. And what that has translated into is, I'm sure a lot of folks remember what the last time Trump won what felt like and what that political resistance looked like there was the women's March in January. That is unlikely to replicate itself the second time

that Trump has been elected. And part of it, yes, is because Trump won this time with more popular support from members of the Democratic coalition, but it's also because organizers are exhausted and frankly, like pretty disheartened. Right, I mean, that was my thought. The Women's March ended up being in January 2017,

one of the largest protest movements in the history of the country. And millions of people across the country participated. I wanna dig into for a second, those demographic shifts that you talked about. I know some listeners might be familiar with some of the work that you've done on this, Domenico, but I'm hoping to just kind of refresh that a little bit. Ashley talked about how black women have been this very stable force for Democrats for years, but I know a number

of other demographic groups who Democrats have traditionally relied upon did start moving away from Democrats. Can you lay that out for us? Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, black women are a pillar of the Democratic Party. No group really votes more heavily in favor of Democratic candidates than black women. They've shown themselves to be very pragmatic when it comes to the types of candidates that they support. 92% of black women voted for Kamala Harris in this election, according to the exit poll. So that's about as unanimous as you can get within a subgroup. Understandably, they are frustrated by the fact that the rest of the coalitions maybe

splintered a little bit. In particular, we're talking about Latinos and younger voters who moved in pretty big numbers in some places toward Donald Trump. He was able to peel off a lot of Latinos, especially Latino men, younger men, some black men. I mean, there was a real theme that was going on here when it came to Trump appealing to men, especially Latino men. I mean, he got 46% of the vote of Latino voters. That's the highest

ever for a Republican and really kind of a shocking thing considering where the party has gone in the past decade in feeling like they were potentially going to lose Latinos long term and that demographics might be destiny for the Democratic Party. And clearly that shows that the issue landscape in this election was one that favored Republicans and that, you know, a lot of Democratic groups will say that Democrats took for granted. Ashley, on the question of the kind of resistance movement, especially compared to the kind of first time when Trump was president, what is your sense from talking to these organizers about what next year will look like?

I mean, are these people who are going to leave the field completely? Are they leaving the door open to maybe they will feel a little bit more energized in a few weeks or months? I mean, what is the kind of outlook here? You know, I talked to a lot of these women in the few weeks right after the election. So at the time, there was just like a lot of resting.

Like it's sort of a lot of just sort of taking a step back and not thinking about politics too much. There was just a lot of fear mostly. They have a lot of fear for the communities they serve, especially folks who organize in immigrant communities. They were like, we're just trying to figure out in the immediate future how to protect those people since they will likely have the most to deal with,

you know, come inauguration. But, you know, I will say one of the things I heard a lot was that this does provide a big wake-up call for the Democratic Party because organizers on the ground have been pointing out that progressive messaging, especially when it comes to economic policy and populism specifically, works really well with the communities they serve. And it's just been harder to get Democrats to embrace that message nationally. So I think that is a space where, I mean, you're going to hear this a lot, like economic policy was like the big blind spot that Democrats had

coming into this election. They sort of underplayed the problems and the real issues, like deep-seated financial fears that people had coming into the voting booth. So I do think that is a place where they see a little more like enthusiasm is like, finally, we don't have to make this case over and over again. But right now, in terms of like how easy it is going to be to like recruit people to, you know, knock on doors and do the work of getting voters together in communities. That's a tough one because right now, everyone just feels really beaten down

and it's hard coming from that posture to get people to do the work of civic engagement because it is hard work. And we'll see where people are in three, four years because after every election, there's a degree of frustration. This is a big tent party within the Democratic Party We'll see where people are in three, four years because after every election, there's a degree of frustration. This is a big tent party within the Democratic Party to assemble coalitions that have varying

interests of things that they want the party to be focused on. It's not necessarily going to be done perfectly for every group because it's almost impossible to satisfy what everybody wants. I think that this debate over how economically populous the Democratic Party should be going forward as compared to trying to appeal to suburban moderates, for example, which was a big focus of the Harris campaign, is going to be a debate that takes place. I mean, we've seen this throughout history when one team gets shellacked, quote unquote, what the adjustment needs to be. And it's not always the message that matters. You know, it shellacked, quote unquote, you know, what the adjustment needs to be.

And it's not always the message that matters. You know, it often is the candidate. It's the person who people want to feel inspired by. Do they make me feel good? Are they somebody I want to register to vote for? And you know, in this election, it was very choppy on the Democratic side and the issues just didn't favor them. All right.

Let's take a quick break and more on this when we get back. NPR brings you the updates you need on the day's biggest headlines. The Senate narrowly passed the debt ceiling bill that will prevent the country from defaulting on its loans. Stories from across the world. Knowing how to forage and to live with the land is integral to Amis culture. And down your block. From CPR News, this is Colorado Matters.

And you can find all of that and more in your pocket. Download the NPR app today. Hey there, it's Tamara Keith. And before we get back to the show, we want to say a big thank you to our listeners. Everything we've been able to do this past year is because of your support. But our work continues. A new administration is preparing to take office with huge consequences for the country.

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to hear this and over 25 other NPR shows sponsor free. And you get other perks too, like bonus episodes, even discounts at the NPR shop. You get all that with Plus, and you'll know you're supporting our mission of creating a more informed public. Go to plus.npr.org to learn more. And thank you. And we're back. And actually, right after the election, there was a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking analysis looking at why exactly Democrats felt like they lost this presidential election. When you talk to people who are actually working and, you know, building these

coalitions on the ground in these communities Why do they think that Trump won? You know someone I talked to this one organizer, you know, the conversation I had with her really sticks out She works mostly in Montgomery County, which is in Pennsylvania right outside of Philadelphia It's one of the more affluent counties in the state but there is this one city in Norristown, which is mostly black and Latino. And, you know, she said, I completely understand how this happened, you know, why specifically Latino men and, you know, some black men decided to either

sit out this election or vote for Trump. And she said, if you think about 2020 and the Trump era and all the organizing that was done, particularly on the left, like think Black Lives Matter, many promises were made about equity and improving the material reality of folks that are black and brown. And if you look at what those communities look like in 2024, you would think none of that organizing ever happened. She said, it's not like all of a sudden there were more roads being built, there was more public education, more access to healthcare. Things didn't really change, except everything got more expensive and

wages didn't keep up. So yeah, you could see how voters are like, why would we continue to vote for this or organize in this way? So I don't know, that's something that really stood out to me is like, you know, depending where you live, especially in black and brown and impoverished communities, things didn't really get much better for you under the Biden administration.

And they said, those are the kinds of things that were hard to message against when they were trying to build their coalitions for the Harris campaign. Yeah, look, I think it's interesting because there's gonna be a lot of, like you said, those are the kind of things that were hard to message against when they were trying to build their coalitions for the Harris campaign. Yeah. Look, I think it's interesting because there's gonna be a lot of, like you said, Monday morning quarterbacking about what went wrong and what didn't. The person who kind of came in to lead Harris's campaign was David Plouffe. And David Plouffe was somebody with long ties to Barack Obama.

He's the person who Barack Obama will credit as having helped win the election in 2008. A lot of people referred to him as sort of Obama's mini-me, you know, kind of strong on messaging. And he had some really interesting things to say after the election in an interview with the Atlantic. He said that it was the cardinal sin in this election not to have a primary because it made it seem like you had a candidate who wasn't fully formed. They weren't able to really have them build on positions or grassroots support. So we felt like that was a big problem. And he called this campaign and them getting in essentially a rescue mission saying that there were headwinds that maybe no Democrat could have

won. But he said that the numbers under the hood were just gruesome, he said, quote unquote, about where things were when President Biden dropped out. And he said they just couldn't get to where they needed to be to make up that ground. That makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, that kind of feeling, not having a primary and just saying this is the candidate we're running, I do wonder whether those two things ended up kind of building this kind of feeling of the Democratic Party as the party of the elites or the party of the like, we know best, we got this guy.

Well, there's that. And also, they just never fired up the base to the point that they needed to, which can happen and does happen after long primaries. You know, why like a lot of people say, oh, you know, primaries are are a bad thing because it exposes all these divisions And pushes people to the left or to the right But what it winds up doing is solidifying the group of voters that they win to kind of coalesce and get together And you know I think that it showed up in what happened in blue states in this election where frankly if Kamala Harris had gotten Joe Biden's numbers In 2020 in places like New York, New Jersey,

Massachusetts and California. She would have won the popular vote fairly handily, but because she was off by, you know, two million votes or so just between New York and California, she winds up losing the popular vote. Yeah. And that's what I heard from organizers is like the communities that they serve that is long been the base of the Democratic Party. We're talking about working class and working poor people here.

They were just not as engaged. They saw that coming in way before Biden left the election. And that just did not get better, especially in time for that election. Yeah. I do wonder about when it comes to how energized the Democratic base is. Domenico, you said to me earlier today,

think about where we were in December of 2004. No one really knew who Barack Obama was at the average voter level. And so I guess I do wonder how energized Democrats are is going to be whether the party is able to find somebody who can energize them. Yeah. I mean, Obama gave this great 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic convention, but in October of 2006, he sort of opens the door to potentially running for president. We're talking two years from now in that timeline. So we're going to see if there's a Democrat who can emerge, who can put forward a vision

for the country that people can get behind. Plus, we also don't know what's going to happen in the next two, three years with Trump as president and whether or not there's a big changeover in the next two, three years with Trump as president and whether or not there's a big change over in the environment and how people feel about the Republican Party, for example. All right. Let's leave it there for today. We will be back in your feed tomorrow with the political roundup.

I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I also cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.