This is Democracy – Episode 282: Elections 2024

2024-11-08 – This is Democracy
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[00:00:00] Intro: This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you, a podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:24] Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy.

Today we are going to discuss the, uh, ramifications and ways people have reacted, uh, to what was a long night on Tuesday, the election of 2024. On November 5th, 2024, we’re not going to talk about, uh, what happened in the election, and we’re certainly not going to talk about why it happened. Uh, it’s too close to the event.

It’s going to take at least a few weeks to analyze the data and to think about why the results came out the way they did. And, uh, we’re not going to use today’s episode to either condemn or praise or express our emotional feelings about the results per se, we’re going to talk about how people have reacted to the results and what this has meant as a historical moment, uh, not just for the change in leadership that will be coming in January of 2025, but for the effects this has had upon, uh, morale, Culture interactions between people in our communities on Zachary.

Now we’re going to talk about this, uh, in particular from the perspective of those of us as a professor and a student who are around young people and what this is meant for young people. Zachary has been writing about this for the Yale Daily News, and we circulated one of his articles about this very topic.

How people in New Haven reacted to the election. We circulated that piece on our substack on Thursday. It’s from the Yale Daily News and easily accessible. Um, Zachary, before we get into this discussion of how communities are reacting to the election, you, of course, have written a poem for us, as you always do.

What’s the title of your poem for today? Election Day. Election day. Appropriately enough. Let’s hear it.

[00:02:16] Zachary: On the morning of election day, I woke up early. Walked the streets at 6am. The sun shining, the sidewalks cold. I said to my friend at the coffee shop, This is perhaps the last morning we will wake up like this.

The last time the world will smell and taste like this. Sweet. And that night already we knew the prophecy had been fulfilled. We knew it had been the last of those mornings. And we went to bed early, toasting before we left, to the memory of democracy, goodnight. On the morning after, I woke up early, it was cold and grey, and when I checked the news, it was clear, the world had soured, so had we.

[00:03:04] Jeremi: Tell us a bit more about what’s behind that poem, it’s, it’s, it’s somber and sad.

[00:03:09] Zachary: Well, this poem is sort of a raw recollection of what that day was like for a lot of my peers, and to an extent for myself. Um, about the, what it’s like, uh, in those moments when like the fate of our country or of our world seems to be in the balance, but also when an individual feels almost powerless, uh, at that moment, um, it’s almost as if, you know, some sort of, um, natural phenomenon were occurring that we didn’t have control or agency in, and there’s a weird way in which, you Especially those of us who voted by mail or who voted early on election day, it feels like something completely beyond our control.

[00:03:57] Jeremi: So you felt powerless, in a sense, is what you’re saying, Zachary.

[00:04:00] Zachary: Yeah, I think there was a feeling among a lot of young people that this was something that was happening that was sort of outside of our control.

[00:04:09] Jeremi: Yet, your sense was that a lot of young people were engaged in voting?

[00:04:14] Zachary: Yes, I mean, um, I went to City Hall here where you could register same day in Connecticut.

Yeah. Um, and I saw, I saw tons of my peers there who were waiting in line for three to five hours to vote on a Tuesday. Um, and some of them getting up early to do so or staying late. Um, so I definitely think there was enthusiasm among young people to vote. Um, the, the issues I kept hearing talking to people were really like abortion rights and, and democracy.

That were motivating how a lot of young people were voting. Um, I do think there was also from a lot of young people and especially those who voted for Trump, a feeling of not resentment, but, um, resentment’s not the right word. It was, it was a feeling that they had been, or that something needed to change, that there was a, um, that there was something missing and something had to change on election day.

Um, whereas I think among. liberals, there was more of a sense of things that needed to be protected and things that were on the line, what the stakes were.

[00:05:38] Jeremi: For those who thought something needed to change, what were they looking to change?

[00:05:45] Zachary: I don’t know. I think there was a, I think there was a sense that the attitude of governance had to change, that people I, maybe this is more hypothesis than real experience, but I do think talking to people, I got the feeling that a lot of them, a lot of them felt were, were tired of, um, politics as usual.

And by that, I don’t mean like backroom dealing, but policymaking. And I think there was a, a sense that what people were doing in Washington is missing the lived experience of a lot of people. And that The Democrats often talk a big game about principles, and for these people they don’t feel necessarily the impact of their policies in their lives, or don’t think they do.

[00:06:43] Jeremi: And so they feel, they feel they’re not, not connected to what’s happening.

[00:06:47] Zachary: Yes, that’s my sense.

[00:06:49] Jeremi: Was, was there a gender divide that was evident to you?

[00:06:53] Zachary: Not really, not that I could see, at least among young people. I mean, I think obviously here at Yale, it goes without saying. Over 80 percent of students, um, who were polled before the election were voting for Harris.

So it’s really not a representative sample size to look at the few Trump supporters on campus that I know, but I, my sense from my senses that the gender divide that people anticipated in the election based on the polling ahead of time, that Women would vote overwhelmingly for Harris. My sense is that, um, obviously the data isn’t really clear at the moment, but my sense is that it didn’t necessarily materialize, that in a lot of states people voted for abortion rights, referenda, that enshrined abortion rights in state constitutions, and for Trump at the same time.

I mean, that has to be the case in a place like Montana, or in Missouri, right, where they voted overwhelmingly for Trump and for Republican congressional candidates, but also voted to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution. So.

[00:07:55] Jeremi: Yeah,

[00:07:55] Zachary: I think for a lot of people, the fears around, um, women’s health that the Harris campaign was playing on weren’t necessarily tied or the solution to that for a lot of voters wasn’t really tied to Harris as a candidate herself.

There was this. So it’s,

[00:08:16] Jeremi: it’s interesting.

[00:08:17] Zachary: And talking to a lot of people here too, I do get the sense that there was a lot of split ticket voting that more so than in past elections, I get the sense of a lot of people voted one way at the time of the ticket, they didn’t vote down the ticket.

[00:08:29] Jeremi: Yeah, that’s obviously true in a lot of states, right?

For instance, in Wisconsin and Michigan, states that Vice President Harris lost Democratic Senate candidates, the incumbent Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Alyssa Slotkin. Uh, new candidate in, in Michigan. They both won, close races, but they both won even as the Democratic presidential candidate lost. So there clearly was, um, split ticket voting and we’ve already talked about states like Missouri where, uh, abortion protections passed, but then was a split ticket Republican candidates, uh, particularly a Senate candidate in Missouri, Josh Hawley, who’s explicitly against abortion access, won the race for Senate.

So, so there is this interesting split that’s going on. It did appear to me, at least at UT, where, um, I think the overwhelming vibe was also, uh, for Harris, uh, certainly in Austin and at UT, but it did appear as if there were more young men, Who are willing to think about Trump than, than I had seen before.

Um, is that a sense you have too, Zachary?

[00:09:37] Zachary: Um, maybe I, again, I don’t necessarily necessarily think I have a representative sample size, but I Right. I do think that there’s a, my sense is the gender divide everyone anticipated in the election didn’t necessarily materialize that Mm-Hmm. as someone said to me before the election.

Um, and I chose at the time not to believe that structurally in many ways the election was. stacked against the Democrats, um, not in terms of like the electoral college or whatever, but just because of the fact that there was a very unpopular, um, unpopular incumbent democratic president that the economy, at least in people’s minds was sputtering.

Um, and I think a lot of pollsters and pundits underestimated the extent to which attitudinally, a lot of people of all races and genders viewed. The political decision as about those issues. As much as they, they actually paid attention to the issues that dominated the two campaigns. Right,

[00:10:43] Jeremi: right. And, and it must be said that, uh, in a year where we have seen more elections than ever before in human history, um, and that’s a good thing, uh, and most of these elections have gone forward peacefully, and, um, they’ve been, they, they, they’ve been carried out and fulfilled, uh, Venezuela’s an exception to that, but, uh, in, in virtually all of these elections, incumbents have lost.

There’s definitely an anti incumbent trend in the world today, which I think is related to people not being happy with the state of the global economy, not being happy with various issues related to immigration, a variety of issues that of course are different in each country and maybe even different in each state within the United States, but have certain commonalities to them as well.

Is there a sense after the elections, Zachary, that you’re seeing of Um, well, first actually describe for us what it was like. You talk about this a little in the poem. What was it like, um, the day after the election on campus and around New Haven?

[00:11:45] Zachary: I think the mood, um, as someone who I talked to for the YDN described it, um, the mood was somber.

Um, I think people, at least on campus, professors, students. We’re sort of really not able to focus or to, um, get back to business, so to speak. Um, a lot of my classes were half empty. Um, one of my professors spent the whole class talking about the election. There was a sense, I think, that, that there, that, like, this was something so big that it made everything else on campus seem small and meaningless.

Um, On the other hand, I do think in the last day or so, things have gotten back to normal. Um, I, I think there was a lot of disappointment here. Um, as I said, like, campus over 80 percent supported Harris, and that’s true for the city as well. Um, I think there’s also just a lot of disbelief among some, or people’s worst fears, or visions of the country were confirmed.

Um, yeah, uh, you hear international students joking about getting deported sometimes. Um, that’s sort of the mood.

[00:13:04] Jeremi: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s also been true from what I’ve seen in Austin and, and elsewhere. It does seem like there’s a mix of sadness, some despair, some, Um, real worry about particular things like deportations, um, like, um, people who are, you know, in government jobs that might be jeopardized, things of that sort.

Um, and then I think, um, there’s a sense of insecurity. I know a number of women have said to me that it’s particularly hard. To contemplate the fact that someone they, they perceive as a, um, as a predator, as a, as a threat to their security is actually going to be President of the United States, um, someone who’s, you know, been convicted in a civil trial of sexual harassment, um, you know, that, that there are all sorts of those issues.

There’s also a little bit of gloating, uh, among some of the, a few people in the tech community here in Austin, uh, a sense of we told you so, um, not too much of that, but there’s a little bit. I’ve seen some of that on, on, on social, on social media. It seems different from previous elections, even different from 2016.

Don’t you think?

[00:14:20] Zachary: Um, yeah, I think so. I think there’s a sense among people like this again, which is on the one hand, I think for a lot of people who don’t support Trump, very frustrating and it almost makes it worse for them. Um, but I also do think, um, That there’s a chance to like we know how to survive this at least a little bit among some Democrats and others Um, I I think there is certainly some gloating I wouldn’t say I told you so but that there there are people who feel Who felt from the beginning like this was gonna happen who fear that this was gonna happen who wanted this to happen Um, one or the other.

And certainly they feel vindicated. Um, and I do think that’s somewhat different than 2016 and that in 2016, no one expected Trump to win, not even Trump and his supporters themselves, really. Um, in this election, I think everyone expected to be really close and the disbelief isn’t really that Trump won, but that he won by so much that he might, that he will in all likelihood win the popular vote.

Um, That, I think, for some people, is really hard to wrap their minds around. Um, it’s not easy for people to write it off this time as, Oh, like, it’s the Electoral College. He clearly didn’t win the elect the popular vote. Um, I think some people are also feeling just that I’ve heard from some people that they think that this just sort of confirms that the country or a wide swath of the electorate is racist and sexist.

There’s a lot of fear, I’ve heard, that there won’t be a woman president. Any time soon because two women have been defeated in the last, um, two cycles.

[00:16:13] Jeremi: Do you, do you think gender was a big part of this?

[00:16:17] Zachary: I’m not so sure. I think it was to an extent. I think there’s certainly a large part of this country that could not imagine a woman in power or struggles to do so.

Um, But again, I think that the Harris campaign was probably as, as good as one could expect, given the circumstances, um, in terms of its effectiveness. And I think, I think that at the end of the day, it’s probably those structural factors that put Trump over the top. And I really think that at the end of the day, it probably wasn’t about the campaign as much as it was about how people feel about the economy, about the state of the world, about their lives.

And I think from the beginning, people were more focused on that. Whatever bad memories they have of the Trump, of the first Trump presidency. And whatever fears they felt of, uh, potential threats toward him.

[00:17:18] Jeremi: And, and I guess that’s where we should go in the conversation, right? Uh, what should we do from here?

One of our goals in this podcast is to use history to help us think about a wider range of alternatives in our present. Uh, there are no silver bullet solutions in the past, but knowing the past, understanding the past, thinking about the past can help us to widen our horizons. Our options and widen our view today.

Um, so with that in mind, thinking about many other elections that have been hard fought and where there’s been a lot on the line and a great deal of anguish with the results, especially in certain communities. One can think of 2016. One can think of 2000. One can think of 1980 when Ronald Reagan was first elected, and we could go on and on.

You know, what are some things you think are crucial in our communities, Zachary, for moving forward and at least keeping, keeping our communities vibrant and getting past Not the pain. I don’t think that’s gonna go away. Not the anger, but the sense of the sadness, the dark cloud that seems to be hanging over our communities and perhaps causing people to sort of turn in on themselves and disengage.

What are some of the things you think we should be doing to get out of that funk without denying the challenges? I think the main thing is

[00:18:43] Zachary: just to focus on the people right in front of you. I think that while obviously the stakes of this election can’t be overstated, I do think that to an extent it is just an election and we have to be willing to go out in our communities and engage still with people who disagree with us and to see them first as community members and friends and family members as opposed to political enemies.

And I think, I think at the same time we have to Not disengage from politics, um, and be willing when there are issues that we care about, um, or principles that we feel are under threat, um, to stand up. Uh, and I think that’s, I think that’s always the case, but I think that’s particularly true when you have a large swath of the country deeply upset and angry at the outcome of an election.

Um, I think the answer is more engagement with our, within our communities, um, and with politics and the political process.

[00:19:45] Jeremi: So doubling down on engagement in some ways. Yes.

[00:19:49] Zachary: Yes. One thing I, one thing I heard, um, speaking to a union organizer last night, um, here in New Haven was a recommitment to, uh, registering new voters and engaging people in the political process.

And I think slowly that’s what a lot of Democrats and Trump opponents are coming to is a recommitment and a renewed resolve. Um, To continue engaging, and I think to some extent that’s the most healthy approach.

[00:20:24] Jeremi: Yes, to keep people, uh, involved, to give them reason to engage. Uh, one other, um, precedent from history in moments like this, in addition to trying to register people and to get them engaged, is to, uh, really find, um, local projects you can build.

Build consensus around, uh, and show that you can actually make progress on things, right? So one of the one of the lessons of the civil rights movement is that a large political change starts small. It starts in our communities and there are lots of things we can do in our communities that maybe we weren’t doing because we were focused on the national.

race. So one thinks about things that can be done in one’s community to improve parks, to bring people together to improve services in one’s community, especially communities where we have a receptive political figures. Do you think that’s something that’s possible?

[00:21:21] Zachary: I think so. I think it’s important to recognize a moment like this.

Um, the extent to which the presidency doesn’t matter in all of our everyday lives, I mean, obviously it has a huge impact and there are a lot of people who are impacted by the election outcome, not just in emotional ways, but in real, real terms. But I think we also have to recognize that so much of what happens in our lives that, that, that matters is well beyond the control of the American president.

Um, and that so much of our politics is local and individuals can make a difference in that.

[00:22:05] Jeremi: Yes, I think that’s absolutely right. What about another thing, Zachary? What about the role of all of us in trying to share good information? Not just sharing our feelings, which is important, and not just sharing messages that express our anger, And mock those we want to mock, but actually trying to educate one another so people understand the issues.

For example, it does appear to me that many people believe that tariffs will bring down the prices of goods. They’re angry about things costing more because of inflation, and they believe a protectionist system will actually bring down prices. That’s, that’s unlikely. It’s not to say that you have to oppose tariffs.

Maybe tariffs are good for another reason. But. Educating people, educating people about what’s really happening in the war in Ukraine, and whether you support it or not, the vital role that American aid plays not, not in somehow wasting American money, but in serving to help people defend themselves. You can still be opposed to it, but, but playing a role that we all can play in educating people.

Do you think there’s a way we can do that to get better information around and out and circulating to people?

[00:23:25] Zachary: I think so. But I think it starts again with a willingness to engage and to talk to all kinds of people and to be willing to talk to people who disagree with with one politically. I certainly think that that information and education is key.

My professor was, um, at a, um, an event in Michigan a couple of weeks ago talking about democracy. And she told us in class that she had someone who came up to her afterwards and asked sincerely whether there were, um, um, Whether there was a clause in the constitution banning communism and, um, to a certain extent to some of us that seems historically ridiculous, but I think it’s also fascinating.

How sincere this person was. They really wanted to know, and they were curious, and they didn’t know. And I think we have to be willing to engage with people at that level and we To talk about these, talk about these things, um, as if their opinion matters, because it does. And I think we’ve seen that in this election.

[00:24:31] Jeremi: Well, what Democrats are accused of quite often, and what professors are accused of quite often, is being condescending. Of not, not actually, uh, engaging people, but in sort of wagging our fingers at them. And I think that’s a fair criticism sometimes, right?

[00:24:45] Zachary: Yeah, I think so. And obviously we’re not getting into, sort of, it’s too early to say what caused this election, uh, loss for the Democrats.

But I do think one thing that I’m hearing from a lot of people on why they think this occurred was a sense, particularly among minority voters, That the Democrats were condescending or had taken their votes for granted. Um, and I think just looking at some of the preliminary numbers, particularly in Pennsylvania, That seems to be the case, or it seems to be clear from some of the voter, voter, um, results.

[00:25:24] Jeremi: What about, um, something we’ve talked about quite a bit on the podcast in the past, and you and I have written about, um, the protests on campus, and around our country regarding Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, etc. There’s, there’s some evidence that, um, in places like Dearborn, Michigan, where you have a large Muslim population, that a large number of people voted for Jill Stein, for example, um, and, um, there’s also some very good evidence that a very, very high proportion of Jewish Americans did vote for Kamala Harris.

What’s your sense of how that issue played out in the election?

[00:26:04] Zachary: I don’t know. My sense is that’s too early to tell. We don’t really know what the numbers are. I, I certainly haven’t looked into what the numbers look like in Michigan, in those parts of Michigan and, uh, and other, other, other places. My, my sense is to an extent, this has helped, the election has helped bring campuses together in the sense that regardless of where people stand on the issue, most students on both sides wanted Kamala Harris to win.

Um, I think among some students on the left, on the far left. This has renewed their sense that this entire system is broken and needs to be torn down. Um, but I don’t think that’s something new. I think that there’s, um, just a lot of anger from both sides. Not anymore directed at each other, but more directed at the election and the outcome of the election.

Mm

[00:27:00] Jeremi: hmm. Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, have people been civil, though, so far?

[00:27:06] Zachary: I think for the most part people have been civil. I think aren’t. On campus. I mean, it’s easy when 80 percent of campus thinks one way or another, but I, I found that it has not been nearly as hard as anticipated for myself and for others to engage with people who voted differently in the election than we did.

And I think that’s a good thing. I think a lot of us just sort of want to be friends again and not talk about it. And not have to talk about the election, much as we will have to talk about the election and the Trump presidency in the next four years. Um, and I think there’s just exhaustion in general.

The most common thing I heard from people yesterday was that they just couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. And that’s regardless of what party they were in. Right,

[00:27:59] Jeremi: right. Well, also because they’d been up very late watching themselves. That’s true. I mean, what I’ve encountered with various groups on campus and off campus is people don’t want to get lost in the issue.

They want in some ways to go on with their regular lives. They want something normal. They want normality. But at the same time, it’s sort of, you know, It’s hanging over the room, and it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s there, and you can try not to let that, that ghost hovering over the room dominate everything you do, but at some point you have to acknowledge it, right, and you can see people thinking about it, especially when you are talking about a historical example, as I might be, or I was leading a workshop on leadership, and you’re talking about the kinds of ethical and unethical leadership.

It’s sort of hanging there, right? And so you sort of have to acknowledge it, but you don’t want to get sucked into only talking about that. And that that’s hard, especially because once you open the subject, first of all, there’s always there’s gonna be people who feel you’re not saying the right thing.

But then also there’s a lot of emotion attached to it, right? 100%.

[00:29:11] Zachary: Yeah, I think there’s there’s just like a lot of I think what I’ve noticed is actually more and more people, more so than before the election, trying to talk civilly and in a way that isn’t partisan about these issues. I think that the election, if anything, sort of, and the decisiveness of the result, shocked people into into wanting to talk to those who disagree with them and to recognizing how important that is.

Um, I think particularly for Democrats, seeing Trump win the popular vote laid bare how, maybe how much they missed, uh, in when looking at politics. And I think to an extent that might be A productive way to move forward is to try and engage rather than disengage.

[00:30:04] Jeremi: I’ve had that conversation with a number of scholarly friends and policy friends, which is it goes somewhat like this.

I think this set of lines was used by two or three people I talked to today, you know, uh, and I feel this way, you know, I’ve spent years, decades studying this country and it’s clear I and so many others who have spent so much time studying it still don’t understand it. It’s very humbling. I don’t think it’s just that we’re biased.

Of course, we have biases, but their dynamics, we don’t see. I mean, so many of us, maybe we were seeing what we wanted to see, but so many of us really thought that this was either going to be close or that if it was going to tilt in one direction, it was going to tilt toward Harris and, um, to see it go the other way.

Uh, I think is, is not only, um, perhaps the opposite of what we wanted, but it’s kind of shocking because it’s, it’s, it’s a surprise in a certain way.

[00:30:59] Zachary: Yeah. But I think more so than 2016 in the sense that, in the sense that this was more decisive and this was less of a, Less of a surprise that Trump won, but that he, but by how much he won.

[00:31:11] Jeremi: Right. And it’s not even how many votes though. He, he, he probably will win the popular vote this time. It’s that, you know, he did what I thought Kamala Harris would do, which was to take all of the swing states or most of the swing states. And that’s, um, yeah, that’s, that, that, that, that’s considerable. It’s not that it, it wasn’t a, a split among the swing states.

Uh, he, he took them all. And that’s, um. All by small margins. So in fact, Harris did not lose by many votes, but in terms of, uh, the number of states and the states that matter, uh, Trump, Trump did very, uh, very well. Um, what, what do you think we can do to better understand not just the Trump phenomenon, but to better understand what we’re clearly missing in our own countries, Zachary?

[00:31:55] Zachary: Um, again, I think it’s just engagement. It’s really being willing to talk to people who we might disagree with. Um, I think also talking beyond sort of polemics, but about real issues, material issues that affect people’s lives, um, and livelihoods is the way to start. I think it’s easy to get lost in the political rhetoric or political arguments and easy to forget.

The material concerns that determine a lot of people’s political decision.

[00:32:33] Jeremi: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think something else we need to do, and this is just good historical work, is we need to really try to understand better where people are coming from, which is to say, not just the economic conditions, but what has happened in different communities.

Uh, I think I had underrated the ways in which, uh, what have been relatively good economic indicators for the United States relative to other economies in the last year or two or three, uh, and what looks like a smooth, what we call, you know, soft or smooth landing after what were fears of recession and recessions that did occur in other countries and after the dislocations of COVID, the ways in which that experience, it’s not just the inflation, But the experience of economic dislocation, of, uh, economic shifts, the ways those have been experienced in different communities and ways that people in those communities don’t even articulate very well sometimes, but yet are still there in their lives and are affecting the way they think.

And one can talk about many issues this way. One can talk about abortion restrictions this way. And the way they affect communities. So it’s really historicizing communities, not just listening to what people are saying, but actually trying to understand where they’re coming from in their historical context to do that better.

Um, and that takes hard work, right? I think that’s right. So, final question, Zachary, uh, I think for both of us to answer, right? Um, you know, uh, Are we going to be able to come back to a more optimistic view of our democracy, or are we entering a more pessimistic phase? We tend to be very optimistic on this podcast, at least I tend to be very optimistic.

It’s hard to be optimistic now, as you said, it’s a sort of somber moment. Uh, and I wrote about this in our sub stack, of course. Um, do you think, though, that there’s a, that there’s a, That there’s a return to optimism and idealism that might be around the corner?

[00:34:32] Zachary: I think so. I think that the benefit of being beyond this election cycle is we can rethink, um, both sides can rethink the political messaging that they use.

And I don’t know. I am, I think there’s a, a real opportunity now, um, for Democrats to engage in the political process in a new way with renewed energy. Um, they certainly have a very clear, convenient enemy, once again, and I think, uh, hopefully as well, um, the political process and the workings of government will, I don’t want to say mellow, but, um, lay bare.

Um, whatever policy changes the Trump administration implements. And I think those conversations and that political process can engender a more democratic end. Universal engagement in these issues.

[00:35:40] Jeremi: Yeah, and I think we can be optimistic just in what you’ve described so well and what we’ve talked about, Zachary, that, um, people can still see the humanity in one another in this moment.

So I don’t think there’s any reason to be optimistic about, um, Upcoming policy choices or, uh, some of the things that are going to clearly be done by a new administration that’s made commitments to deport large numbers of people, um, to try to, uh, give tax advantages to its friends. I mean, those are not things to be optimistic about.

Those are not things that are going to be good for the country. Um, but I do think, uh, we can be optimistic about our common humanity and how this moment reminds us of that. And as we’re in our communities now. struggling with despair, anguish, sadness, and some who feel differently, right? That it, it reminds us how important these communities are, and it reminds us how much our politics is, in some ways, not an accurate representation of who we are.

So to see that our politics are not who we are should make us pessimistic, perhaps, about our politics, but maybe optimistic about ourselves. I mean, we, we, we are better than much of what we are. was chosen in this election. Most people, whether you like Donald Trump or not, think better of their neighbors, social and, and daily habits.

And, uh, you know, that’s something we need to lean into. We need to find ways to make those habits more prominent in our lives and to make those qualities that we value in our neighbors. More represented in our world. We can be optimistic that there might be some ways to do that, at least at the local level.

It seems to me that’s, that’s, that’s back to what Alexis de Tocqueville, along with Franklin Roosevelt, right? One of the, the, the inspirations for our podcast, when he visits the United States in the early 19th century, what he sees. Is the vibrance of American communities. He’s not, he’s not enthralled by American national politics.

It’s the communities. It’s the locals. It’s the associations that really, really move him and college campuses are just one version of that. It seems to me. Are you, are you hopeful, Zachary?

[00:37:48] Zachary: I think so. Um, I’m hopeful that we can move beyond the vitriolic politics of the election and that this is, as we said, an opportunity to re engage.

Yeah.

[00:38:04] Jeremi: Well, I think we have to make it that and, uh, my invocation, my plea for our loyal, wonderful listeners is to try to find ways, uh, to express your emotion and sadness. We can’t keep it in. Um, and to, uh, allow oneself the space, uh, as you said, Zachary, even maybe to spend when you can a morning in bed and relaxing and taking care of oneself and letting the emotions out and sharing them with others.

But I think it’s also, it’s also important that we. Invest in some small things where we have some influence that can give us hope in our communities, in our friendships, in our relationships. Uh, politics is not a substitute for those things. And the work we do in those areas we know as historians pays enormous dividends to us as individuals.

To our communities, and it eventually seeps into our politics, so we still have a lot to be hopeful about just as we also have reasons to be scared and concerned, and that’s not new to our democracy. It’s just a different mix now, maybe from what we had a few years or a few months ago, but. But it will be part of the process.

It’s a new chapter in what Franklin Roosevelt called the book of democracy. Uh, Zachary, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and you’re really very moving and honest poem this week. Uh, thank you to our loyal listeners, uh, those who are kind enough to listen to our podcast. Uh, maybe find some solace in it in moments like this, to those of you who subscribe to our sub stack.

Uh, and most of all, we want to thank All of you for believing in democracy and continuing to believe in our democracy. Our democracy will continue to grow and emerge from difficult moments if we all keep our faith in it and work to use our history as a democracy to help to continue to grow and improve our democracy.

Thank you for that. And thank you for joining us for this week of this is democracy.

[00:40:05] Intro: This podcast is produced by the liberal arts ITS development studio and the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this as democracy on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

See you next time.