Where The Democrats Went Wrong
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From getting engaged to getting married, Zola has everything you need to plan your wedding in one place. Start planning at Zola.com. That's Z-O-L-A dot com. Wake and bake, fever dreamers. The nightmare is real, but we are still here. There will be no rise and shine today, but there will be a lot of analysis of what the fuck just happened. Sammy, welcome to the show. Hi, V. What is going on here?

Me and Sammy were just talking about like we couldn't even do the opening of the show normal because the entire world just feels sort of like abnormal right now. Rise and shine indeed. You know, look, we don't submit it in advance. So rise and shine it is.

let's just give everyone some context. We weren't sure when the results would come, so we didn't schedule an episode for today because we were going to basically give you an update. And here we are. We are going to do some post-game analysis, some bonding, sharing. I'm also going

also going to bitch a lot. I think that this is a safe space to be. Oh, good. Okay, great. We're doing bitching because that's what I really want to do. I've been doing that by text all for 36 hours. We have to. This is the group chat and I'm not here to be unrealistic about where folks are at. I think the Fever Dreamers are with us. We've got a lot of analysis and a lot of answers of why this happened. I've been doing an autopsy the last two days. I'm going to give you some things that go on. Sammy was on MSNBC to tell people how it is about democracy. But first, we're

Settle in. Tell your kids this episode is not family-friendly. And let's talk some shit about what happened because that's the way I'm feeling, you know? I'm like, I'm all over the place. Well, it's family-friendly depending on your family. Let's be honest. Yeah, there we go. This, I think, would have been friendly in my family.

To your point about, you know, we're just going to say whatever we feel. Yeah. I think that our lack of willingness to maybe do that before and our sort of desire to do that now and be clear about that that's what we're doing. I think that that is a reaction to these results. In terms of the mood, I think that there is a sense that

people who are covering politics from quote unquote, the left or for Democrats are not straightforward or won't just kind of let it fly the way a Joe Rogan or an Aiden Roswell. And I think culturally that has been a major shortcoming for Democrats and people who are espousing liberal ideas or feminist ideas, because there's this, it's, you know, sort of purity test of,

around what you can and can't say. And there's a sense of, you will be attacked for what you say from people who generally agree with you. Whereas Donald Trump won this campaign on offending everybody. And he broadened his coalition with the very people who he offended. So I think we need to analyze our media ecosystems. And I think we need to analyze the democratic brand and the way we speak to people.

Not we, not just you and me, not just you and me. I mean, Democratic politicians and the message strategy that is set from the top. Yeah. When they go low, we go high, right? I feel like that Michelle Obama certainly she threw out after a certain amount of time and she was like, no, when they go low, we fight back now. But it is this idea that like we're supposed to be so civil and fair and objective and they don't have to be, you know.

I think one of the interesting reactions I saw to this was now that we've figured out like where the votes came from for Trump or whatever, Brian Tyler Cohen, friend of the pod said,

announced that he's starting a Twitch channel because he's like, obviously there is a vacuum for white men, for men who listen to podcasts and all they're getting is more of Matt Walsh, Crowder, Andrew Tate, whoever, whoever. And he's going to go over and start a Twitch channel and try to do liberal politics stuff. And I will say, there's a lot of boys on TikTok who did that. You got Harry and Dean and Chris Mowry and all them. And in some ways, I wonder what their reflections will be on

if all this debate culture and all this bros with podcast culture actually just made the Trump coalition a little bit stronger because it was like there were more targets for them to hit with these liberal soy boy back and forth. I'm not sure. I don't know. I feel that- I'm going to listen to his Twitch though. I love Brian. He has been same. And maybe I'll finally, I did make a Twitch account a

maybe like a year ago because I wanted to make an account of- I don't know that we're going to get left-wing bros podcasts. I don't know that we're going to get the bros the way that they do. Well, okay. What I'm thinking is beyond that. We need to stop acting in response. We need to stop following them. That is the problem. People on the left, boosters on the left are not acting as leaders. And

The country said that. It's not just Kamala Harris. It is all the House races that just you look at a map and directionally everything went towards the right. And that tells you more about the party and the tone of the party and the communications and the priorities than it does and how Americans perceive those priorities and the media delivery system.

has been really fucked. But again, that's a more solvable problem. They have to figure out how to reach voters. We need to stop doing everything in response to them. Our answer...

is not going to be the equivalent of their thing. Because their thing is shaming people for being in any way nice. If you're nice, and that shame kind of worked, right? The idea that if you support the Democrats, you support men and women's sports. All the lies were really effective. If you support liberals, you support transgenders getting sex assignment surgery in prison on the cost of this one and that one.

It's just this is going to be the hardest podcast we do because I'm so exhausted. I don't want to rant too much. Exactly. And the Democrats need to find a way to emotionally resonate with people in a way that is true to them.

And you can't do that by reacting to what the other side is saying and doing. You need to reset the conversation. And are we going to figure it out today? Are the Democrats going to figure it out today? Certainly not. A new class of messengers and strategists needs to come up. And that needs to include new organizers, coalitions that people who know how to speak, younger people who know how to speak and communicate with each other. Pete Buttigieg.

And reach outside of their specific demo. You know what's funny about Twitch is that a year ago I wanted to start a Twitch, which was me watching MSNBC. So it would be turned on MSNBC and then my reactions because I can't keep my face. And I'll just mutter things and I actually think that it would be

And sometimes when I like make a story and I'll say things in the background, people will be like, I want to see you watching this. So that was something I thought about. And you know what? It's not about that being like me, you know, my thing. It's like there needs to be something that will be interesting and we need to be unafraid to try new frontiers of communication. Ultimately what this is about setting the conversation. If you ask people, what were the main issues in this election?

The thing you heard over and over again was immigration and inflation. And they successfully weaponized all of the post 2020 BLM social justice conversation that arose within the party that year. They spent 2021, 2022 demonizing CRT, transnationalism.

transgender people in girls sports, the green M&M who wore high heels. It's like they use this, they crime in New York City, crime in California. So these liberal cities are these places where the migrants are taking everything and your milk is $10 because of those migrants because, and

And the Democrats only care about having a DEI candidate. She's a black woman. See, she can't even do this, this and that because we never show you her good answers. We only show you the time when she claimed that the maps, she looked at the maps in Rafa and they believe that that is all she is. And I don't think it's a coincidence that she over-indexed on college educated white women who understand what

that she had to jump twice as high, run three times as fast as anybody else, just so she could get criticized four times as hard. And I think that there is there.

There is a divide. It is now seen as the party of elites. And when you look at the demographics, it is. And I myself am that person. Remember when I was going to write the coastal elite lament, my answer to hillbilly elegy? It's coming. It's coming. Us coastal elites are misunderstood. Let me tell you, these are my things that I am mad about. This is my little pity party corner for the moment about the campaign because so many people say her campaign failed. Her campaign did not fail.

If we there were two campaigns running at the same time, there was the runoff and the leftover Biden campaign and the stuff that people were sort of like given space to do. And there was a lot of like deference given to like the people that were there. And it was very precious. And then there was the new sort of like Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC side of things.

Those two ran parallel. And I think many times it was obvious that there was a disconnect between the graciousness and the whatnot we had to give the old guard to make space for the new guard. And then in between the piece, because I was on these influencer teams, right? The in-between of like what the old Democrats were and what the new version were, were millennial people pleasing managers. And I fucking love you guys. And I am one of you, right? We know who they are. These are our friends. This is our people.

And there was a lot of like, okay, trying to make everybody feel special and wonderful. And this is where it got out of hand. We should have never had Bill Clinton out there. There was no reason for it. I don't think Bill Clinton added a whole lot of voting. This is my bitch. I'm going to tell you what I didn't like. Look, I hear you, but do you think that anything tactical could have really made a difference? When you look at the environment globally, but when you look at the global environment,

Every party that was in power when inflation started was voted out. Every single one. And Kamala Harris actually overperformed compared to the other parties, which look, it's copium. It is because it exists amidst all these other things. But I feel that the only real change that could have happened post Biden dropping out in 2023 would be if she had gone very hard on immigration.

But she couldn't do that because she would have alienated the left. Well, you're talking about real things. Listen, you're talking about real things. I'm talking about petty little bitching things. Oh, okay. And I'm going to continue my bitchy rant. This is my bitchy rant about things. Yeah, I got to get it out. These are things that I don't want to be criticized about the next round. These are the little – here's the thing. When we're in a crisis, right, when bad things happen, when you are in pain, right, you just fell off your bike.

you're not going to be able to feel better right away, but you're going to address some of the things that hurt the most. And sometimes those are the most annoying things, right? Like, oh, I'm bleeding or, oh, I have road rash or whatever. These are my road rashes of the situation, okay? These aren't the issues I have with the structure of the bicycle or the road it was on.

So what I'm talking about is the internal bleeding and you're talking about the shit you don't see. Yeah, I don't know. We're not too internal bleeding yet. We just fell off the bike. I'm looking at it and I'm like, oh my God, my face. Okay. So these are, this is, I have a little bruise on my face and this is what it is. And for me, it was the fact that a lot of the boomer politicians in the democratic party, and I'm going to include all of them. And I want everybody to just hold your criticism of me because I am fragile right now.

Elizabeth Warren, Bill Clinton, even Obama, not Michelle, all this kind of group, right? That did not excite young people. It felt like grandparents at the bat mitzvah, right? We want to dance and have a great time and be idiots with our friends. And you guys are trying to say it's time to do whatever traditional thing we always do. And I don't want to, I wanted to have fun with my friends. And it always felt like they were trying to like

be a part of it or keep control in some way. And while maybe that served a purpose, I do think that sometimes it was annoying and perhaps didn't work that well. And I hope we don't do that in the next four years. I hope in the next four years, it's not the same Bill Clinton coming out here and Elizabeth Warren coming out here and Bernie coming out here. I also think there's this sense of like that old guard elitist, you don't understand what things are really like now vibe.

Was not helped either by leaning so much on every celebrity. Every single one. There were too many celebrities that were involved directly with the campaign versus they could have just posted on their own thing because it's like- That is my next black eye. Yeah. Came across as elitist. It came across as elitist. It also came across as like,

The new generation of celebrity is the influencer, is the average person, is the activist, the union worker, all these different people, right? And those people got their time kind of, but Kerry Washington got a lot of fucking time, okay, for being on a show that was about the president from years ago. Not knocking Kerry Washington's activism, I'm just saying, I'm not sure that we needed her

10 times, maybe just once or twice. And then there would have been a little bit more space for folks like from the working parties family to be platformed and talk about how there was a third party. And maybe that kind of helps us with the Jill Stein third party people. I just think these are the things that I'm looking at as like, hey, we need to include more people from the ranks and less people from the celebrity culture because celebrity culture is not what motivates young people anymore. It's influencers who are more like their peers. Yeah. You look at what the Republicans had

That was what was influential. It was just the sort of group chat household name, not the Jennifer Aniston household name. Here's the other thing that I think was amiss is

A lot of the Democratic governors and the surrogates were playing influencer a lot of time, right? We saw a lot of them doing TikTok trends, being on the bus. I think Gretchen Whitmer was a big victim of perhaps this or one of the biggest proponents of this. It's funny once or twice, but it became such a major part of the campaign that the Democratic governors were all goofing around and having all these great TikToks and trying to be on social media. But we know that TikTok and social media doesn't translate to the real world in quite a way. And why?

And what we missed was the Gen X vote. And that is actually the community they were a part of. Like, where were the salons for women of the Gen X group? Where were the salons for men of the Gen X group? We're going to have beers tonight at whatever and play pinball. Like, I think the people of that age and the Democratic governors could have spent less time tick tocking and more time traditionally campaigning because we lost a lot of those traditionally reached demographics.

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Let's also talk about the social strategy and these, the short form video and how they were measuring effectiveness of content that was under a minute. I just want to say like, I know everyone thinks, oh no, everyone has no attention span, blah, blah, blah. But I do not believe that their strategy maximized for engagement around persuasion because you can't really persuade people

an unreachable voter in a 30 second to one minute video. You're running up the, you know, impression scale, but how are you actually reaching new people? Donald Trump sat down with Joe Rogan for three hours and people watched the whole thing. People listen. And the lack of

long form sit downs, casual off the cuff conversations and over indexing on scripted remarks and choreographed TikToks was what I think was a mistake because it was like empty views. And I'll just say like, I made these 15 to 20 minute videos on disinformation and the Jewish community and people watch them because they're

They want to hear the information in full. They don't want to hear a shorthand algorithm optimized version of that. Like it sucks to, yeah, no, that's not going to like catch the algorithm, but I don't want to catch the algorithm and get a bunch of empty views. I want the people who are listening to it to listen to it, hear it, send it to people and actually influence the way they look at things or cause them to go look for more information. The way that

these right-wing influencers do. People are watching these 30-minute podcasts. There's only so much you can repurpose of scripted remarks. Right.

I think you had said early on, you were like, every single one of her rallies needed to be new. They needed to not be like, she couldn't use the same stump speech every time. It needed to be new every single time. And I know that that's an insane amount of work, obviously. But I actually think she could have done it if she wasn't sort of like held back in certain ways. They had a billion dollars. Because she is good off the cuff. The thing is, she's good off the cuff when she's not feeling the pressure to impress every... So scared, yeah. That's the difference. Donald Trump can say anything. He insulted...

All of the groups that then voted for him in greater numbers except the Jews, which really only moved slightly, which is Jewish women and black women voted in the highest number. Held it together as always. For Kamala Harris. And that is why when people say – now, when people say the Democrats are bad, I want you to really –

understand that the predominance of this group is made up of marginalized people. So when your people, this is what I don't like about online when they're like, the Democrats are terrible, the Democrats or whatever. You are directly criticizing pretty much every marginalized group that is in the Democratic group. Like I get, you could say, oh, I don't like Nancy Pelosi's leadership style. Say that then. Don't say the Democrats are evil and bad because that is very anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-woman coded. I think when people say that, they mean that the party is not delivering for me.

I think about the ways that the party either hasn't delivered for certain communities or

has not communicated what they have done adequately. And that's, I don't want to say that's like all their fault because part of that is this ecosystem where you have outlets that will repeat lies, truths, anything the Republicans say. And here we are trying to parse through what actually happened. And it's, it's not as easy to take in and the mainstream media, which is actually doing this journalism because they can afford it. We're just taking it, taking their reporting and telling you what it says and

They aren't reaching the people and they're not trusted. Yeah, I think the TikTok strategy and the influencer hype house strategy was an interesting one. I think in many ways it worked in the ways that it helped build coalitions and it created a permission structure up against a lot of

issues on TikTok with needing permission to vote for Harris because of her position on Gaza and that being something that was very, you know, like all over TikTok and like whatnot. So I think the influencer thing did work, but I do think that sometimes the folks who were in charge of influencer marketing in some ways thought like, oh, we can make a million Vs. And no, it came off as very propaganda in some cases. And some of them I watched and I was like, cringe. They can't make a million Vs, but

Could other Vs pop up with other voices that reach other people? I think that they could have better. But again, it was still relying on celebrities, right? They were looking at your total follower count and saying like, oh, you know, this person's got a huge follower count, so we'll treat them like a celebrity. And we were getting some of these, you know, influencer endorsements that were about as empty as a makeup tutorial in some cases.

Some people really killed it. I want to shout out Avery Cyrus in particular and Cole Perez. They're two influencers. Avery Cyrus originally became famous for being Jojo Siwa's ex-girlfriend. And Cole Perez is a trans man who really just exists as a cute trans boy online. And like they both learned a ton about policy and the repercussions of

of what happens in the world in government. And they came from absolute zero and they were really effective spokespeople for this. They were the two standouts, I would say, that came from zero understanding of politics to really having offline, genuine conversations and becoming leaders in the movement. And I think that was really cool. It was the first time we did it, right? So we're going to learn from it, but I think it still relied a little bit on celebrity marketing strategy as opposed to what influencers do well, which might not

be the way that you would approve a script. You might not approve their script, but it might have worked a little bit better or been more authentic. Look, they need to figure out a way to invest. I don't know. That could mean financially. That could mean resources. That could mean access.

Well, that was Amplify. Let's stay on that for one second. So there was this group called Amplify that came in and they invested in long form content. They're the people who helped fund my election night pizza party stream. They did a lot of the influencer, gave them equipment or space or time, paid for the creator studio at the DNC. They were investing in new media. And I think that we

put new media and influencers and TikTokers and everything in one bucket. And in fact, they were separate. There is an opportunity for stuff like, dare I say, the American Fever Dream podcast to compete with mainstream media or Betches News to compete with mainstream media or Under the Desk or whatever the case may be to tell a better story and make people feel more included and invited and reach them better. And I think Amplify was the ones that stood out to me and Generator Collective also for investing in new media, giving us the money we needed to

to be able to compete with the big boys. Right. I think that that is...

critical. We are just behind on it. Yeah. So we're getting started. But they were very positive even after she lost. We're like, this was the start, though. We're starting. We're learning. We're doing a lot of stuff. They didn't give up on it. So I was like, OK, good. Good. I mean, this is a long road. You saw so many tweets that were like, we need a liberal Andrew Tate. It's like, no, we don't. OK, you don't need that. But you do need more people who are like

Scott Galloway, who talks about masculinity in a way that doesn't want to drive you into the arms of someone like Andrew Tate and doesn't reinforce that view on masculinity.

And I just think we have a long way to go. And even now, I'm like, you know what? I'm not this working class voter. I do think that I can relate to a lot of different people. And I want, obviously, everyone to have opportunity. That is why I am a Democrat. Look, I think that there's this reflexive desire to, what do we do now? Solve the problem. You see all these groups are organizing. You hear that these

bigger groups, PACs are kind of scrambling. And it's like, why don't we just wait a second? Why don't you listen to what... If I were a Democratic representative who had just kept my seat by a lot or a little, I would be going back to my constituents immediately, having a town hall or

any sort of office hours, a listening tour. I would be doing a listening tour with my whole district and hearing Democrats just, my party just lost really, really badly, you know, and speak to the different constituencies within your district and like, thank those who supported you. Ask what you think you can continue to do. Reach out to the people who didn't and ask them how Democrats or how they, as their representative, can be more responsive to them.

to get them to support them next time or win their vote back. That is what has to happen. And that cannot happen overnight. I think about like my life in the restaurant because it was like you started your day over and over and you know, the brunch crowd didn't care how great my dinner service was. If I had a shit dinner service, it was like the next day you were like, all right, look,

look, I thought that that was going to be a banger dish and it fucking sucked. It was too many steps. The flavor wasn't right. The grill was too hot, whatever was going on. You didn't like finish the shift and immediately start cooking the meal again. I was like, okay, I'm going to go get a beer, right? I'm going to bitch about service. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to

spend my prep period the next day, like in complete silence, thinking about where it went wrong. And then I'm going to come back and I'm going to do something a little different based on all of that time. Right. And if you look at a restaurant, it's just like, that's a 24 hour cycle to fix a dish. We're talking about an entire party here. I think the democratic party should be

pretty reflective and on a listening tour for at least the next six months to a year, right? That they don't have a year. They need three months. There are parts of this. There are parts of this, right? President Biden is president for right now. There's going to be some people who need to be on the react and say, what can we Trump proof right now? And some of you need to do that. Some other people need to be in a reflective listening mode tour, right? Some other people need to take some hard truths about, is it their time to step away? Right?

and make enough space for there to be room for learning. Because the thing you can't do is you can't put Bill Clinton on a listening tour, right? You can't put Elizabeth Warren on a listening tour or even Gretchen Whitmer or any of these other people. It's gotta be somebody that's coming from like more of like a brother Jones from Tennessee level. Like we need to see it be somebody new and not a reminder of sort of like dads in the room. I think it should be people's own representatives. We elect officials to represent us and I'm,

That is the one thing in this system that I think is actually pretty

Look, is it great that House members have to get reelected every two years, that incumbents have such a great advantage in some situations that they run unopposed? That's not great. Is the gerrymandering a huge fucking problem? Yes. But I do think that this is the space of opportunity where elected officials will lose their jobs in two years. And they have to they know that.

If they do not listen and if they want to be, you know, every politician I've heard a saying wakes up every morning, looks in the mirror and sees a president. And if any of those see a president or a leader, they need to go speak to every person and hear them out.

and do better for them. And if that means not being their representative anymore, it might mean that. Go work in politics some other way. I think you're right with that. And let's look at the structure that got us to where we are since the 1970s, Republicans versus Democrats, right? I don't think that we need an Andrew Tate. I do think that we need a liberal federalist society. Where's the, you know what I mean? Like the federalist society is going into colleges young and saying, hey, we're going to promise you a job at the end of this, training, mentorship, money, power,

And that is when they're starting to turn people whose frontal cortex is developing into conservative judges and lawyers. Where is the alternate to that? Maybe there is one. I've never heard of it. You let us know, Fever Dreamers. But I would invest in that. Like, what is the avenue that's going in and trying to meet people and say, hey, yeah, you can go Federalist Society way or you can come this way and we're offering you mentorship, power, money, whatever the case may be, to not be like that.

Where is the investment in new media outlets, right? Like we can't just keep doing the same television thing with the same people all the time and thinking it's going to change people. Where's new media being met? What is the realistic expectation of influencers and TikTokers or Twitchers or whatever space they occupy in the universe and letting them actually do their thing and not just trying to make them what the older generation is comfortable with or can understand, which is celebrities and TV personalities and pundits. I think there were two

at the DNC that were really emblematic of what's going on here. That you had the creators who the whole legacy media thinks is like being treated like kings and queens, but is actually being so heavily monitored that we couldn't go anywhere. And there's barely any access to the candidates or

I had not one. Not one surrogate interview. Not one interview the entire time. It was all heavily controlled. And then the other thing that I think is kind of a metaphor is that they teased a surprise guest on the final night. They then leaked that it was going to be Beyonce and it was Leon Panetta.

And that is a failure of communication. That is a failure of understanding how the brains of voters work. When you set up an expectation that you're getting Beyonce and then you get someone who everyone is like the undecided, you know, the average disengaged voters like who that feeling sinks into people about the Democratic Party.

That we make big promises and we disappoint. And then we give you something that they like, that we're going to tell you that you like. Didn't you like that? No, you didn't? Okay, because it's not for you or your generation. I mean, Trump had no celebrities and look what he got. But he had all of the podcasters he needs.

What he had was shame. And that's what I think actually is one of the biggest driving features here. He was able to use shame and othering to motivate people to class division and to even like Latinos against Latinos division. I want to talk about the biggest thing that I thought was horrible and disgusting that actually ended up being the thing that worked for him the most. And that was the promise of mass deportations. Mm-hmm.

And Kamala Harris performed poorly with city dwellers compared to Joe Biden, which was also something in my little autopsy. I was like, oh, how interesting.

And part of that was because city dwellers, people from L.A., New York City, Miami, et cetera, felt that they had been flooded with immigrants, immigrants that were bussed in from border towns by Republican governors and whatnot. It was covered heavily by the media. It made it seem like the one bus was a thousand buses. It made it seem like the crowding on the subway was because all these people aren't supposed to be here. They're taking up my air, my opportunity, my space.

If you live in L.A., so many of my friends have applied for jobs at like Chipotle and they can't get one because there's 20 applications for every single job that there is out there. That is not immigrants fault. That is the fault of one cut schedules, corporatism and like a lot of other fuckery that goes on out there.

But every city dweller, whether they were Democrat or not, that mass deportation thing got in their head and made them think, okay, if we get rid of some of the competition for housing, for jobs, for whatever, maybe I will be able to live my American dream. And it was that inherent sort of like bias that did that. She performed 10% slower in Miami than Biden did.

And the mass deportations hit with Latino voters who think that Trump is somehow going to know the difference between or even care that there is a difference between El Salvadorian migrants who come here for asylum, middle class Guatemalans who came here for business or education and Puerto Ricans who are American citizens, but who will no doubt be caught up in his mass deportation camps because it already happened. Where's he going to deport them to? Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico, probably from the mainland. That's.

He does not see Puerto Rico as we know. He doesn't see them as part of America or as citizens. He would certainly send them back to the island and he'll send people back to Mexico or wherever else. He doesn't believe in naturalization. He doesn't believe in birthright citizenship. And we already know this happened because there were Americans that got caught up in the border detention camps the first time who were American citizens who just happened to be brown skin. And they were in there for months. Now we're talking about mass deportation. See what's

And that is a promise that he will fulfill because that is a bloodlust that his base loves to see. They love to see other people punished for their own failures. And he likes it. It's a power move. I actually think of all of his types of bigotry.

This is his strongest one. He'll take a Jew as his accountant. Sure. But he doesn't have any of that. Now, let me tell you the second level of this that had not been talked about. I did a video about Trump in Guatemala, but really close to election time. And I don't know that my little white lesbian voice was like exactly reaching the right people with this, but I was trying, right? Like I was trying.

It is not just that he hates anybody who's not him, basically, but it is that he has these deals with autocrats around the world. So here's what happened. The United States destabilizes Latin American and Central American countries all the time for various reasons. When that happens, people from those countries obviously try to escape poverty just like all of our ancestors, most of our ancestors did from other European countries when they came here.

But I'm saying like, you know, we tried to escape what was going on in Ireland and Albania. So we came here. People are doing the same thing. They're trying to escape the fascist and communist destabilization of their countries for America, for this idea of like the American dream, which still exists. So what happens then is all the low level worker. Let me use Guatemala as the example in case you didn't see the TikTok. In Guatemala, we destabilize them, right? They have a period of fascism and autocratic dictatorship with this guy, Jimmy Morales. And,

People are leaving Guatemala to try and come to America, which means that they don't have coffee workers. They don't have village workers. They don't have all of the low-wage labor in the country because those people are the ones who are coming up to seek asylum. So the country starts to falter with their economic structure because the country, like all countries, are built on low or slave-wage labor.

So they come here. So what Trump's deal is, I'll deport them back and you can re-enslave or re-low wage worker these people. It's not just about getting them out of America. It's the deals he's making with autocrats in Guatemala. Well, now they have a new president, but in El Salvador, certainly, in Venezuela, certainly, to say, I'm going to send them back and they'll be your prisoners to do what you want with, right? Because they will have been imprisoned here in some sort of concentration camp.

And then they will be brought down to you as some sort of prisoner. They're not just, they could get dropped off on a bus in the middle of nowhere, El Salvador, but it is very likely that they will be in a coordinated transfer. And what happens to those people then? They get put back on the coffee farm to work off their debt to the country for being repatriated. Well, there's that and the fact that even if he does not have coordination with any governments, with all the governments, I mean, America famously,

is very good at changing those governments when they want to. Well, we know that he's very in with the El Salvadorian autocratic president, Naib. Naib celebrated his inauguration, is also deeply close friends with Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz,

and other Republican leaders. So El Salvador's autocratic president is already counting on this prisoner exchange for labor and to punish people who left his country for America. You know what I mean? That's going to be bad. Maduro, the sort of illegitimate president of Venezuela, who pretty well stole his election, is also super excited for a Trump presidency, talking about the same thing. It is high-level politics.

human trafficking. And this is what 53% of Latinos voted for because they think that somehow it's not going to affect them. And I see this in the gay community, which is why I'm bringing it up here. It's not to pick on one community over the other. There are a lot of gay people who are like, we're LGB, but not the T because the T is the most vulnerable and it's also the most attacked. And they're like, well, no, no, no, but we're not like that. We're not like that. Take them, take them, take them. And it's like, they're coming for you too. That's always how it works.

And that is why I believe he was fundamentally a deal breaker on every level, no matter what. That ship has sailed with persuading people of that, obviously. But to your point, and I think we really need to have Palo Ramos on the show. We were supposed to interview her, but then Hurricane Helene hit and she had, you know, had to go do reporting. So, but she wrote a book about this. It was called Defectors, how large swaths of

the Latino community, which is not really a name that makes any sense. It's like when they say the gay community, right? It's like too broad a term for how diverse the people in it are. Right. We're just using it for generalizations here. And she basically examines how a lot of cultural factors are set

to make a strong man very attractive. And, you know, I don't want to kind of go into all of that here, but that clearly was a factor that was working here. And I really think that it was, that is something that the Democrats missed. Like, even when you talk about it, it's like Trump's up with Black and Latino voters. It's like, well, those are all different people. Like you just named 10 different communities within BIPOC. And I think that that is where

the Democrats didn't really think about it this way. Like they didn't think that the dreamers whose status has been up in the air for so long and Obama was going to help them, that it was fair that immigrants were coming and being put up in hotels and all these things. And it's like,

There is this sort of like last in belief where it's like, and especially people who did it legally. It's like if you did it legally and it makes sense, it feels unfair. And so they want to identify in a lot of cases with whiteness. Many, many people do. Well, that's the thing that a lot of folks are about to find out. And then-

I have one more pity rant, but a lot of folks in this election thought that the gulf, the jump from where they are to white power is a lot more narrow than it is.

And they all decided that they could make that jump and we are all ending up in the gully beneath here because it is not. It's like how everyone thinks they're going to be a billionaire. You're not going to be. And that jump to white power that he promised you was just a little jump. Just come on. Just try and jump knowing you would fall in the pit. It's not your fault, but let's just not do that again, right? Fool me once.

Shame on me. You know what I mean? Fool me, let me, whatever that is. I don't know. I don't know. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me and I'm a fool. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on me. That's what I'm saying. So he made it look like this golf was so easy and there was tons of people saying, I did it, I did it, I did it.

it, Byron Donaldson, Marco Rubio, some of the people who he put out there as examples of how you could align with white power, that jump was never going to happen. Those seats were already filled. There is a finite of room for marginalized communities in white power, and they are always as tokens. And they already have their token. You were never going to make that jump. I think some of them might, but how much power does Marco Rubio have?

He's just a simp.

and go. I survived a war. I'll survive this. I was telling my wife, I was like, the Christian nationalists sent Trump this time. Well, the Christian God has sent locusts and floods and all kinds of shit in the past. And humanity survived, and we will survive this also. We'll be annoyed, and it'll be difficult. There's going to be a lot of harm that gets done, certainly. But we will survive it. We don't submit. Look, my grandparents survived Auschwitz. I have survivor fucking blood.

And I really believe that a lot of this is about self-preservation. And I think that that is what he tapped into. He has tapped into that for a lot of people. And part of it is true. There's less money in my pocket and it looks like the world is getting ahead of me. And he tapped into that.

Taylor's oldest time successfully blamed it on immigrants entirely, successfully blamed it on the Democrats who are weak and let all these immigrants in and coddle them because and then here is their president who represents that.

And it's like all the things about her they used against her because she's the example of that hardworking. Her mother, her parents are the example of like that hardworking immigrant who did everything right and like, you know, had a job as a prosecutor and stood up for the law. And they somehow made none of it matter.

The Democrats offered everybody can be equal in their own special rainbow and there are no hierarchies. And in fact, for the last 10 years, I've told white men that they're shit and the girl boss movement, I blame a little bit for this. And like the idea that like telling white men they're trash and should have no voice maybe didn't work out. No, no, no, it was not. That was not the girl boss movement. That was post 2020. Well, post 2020, there was that. But I mean, the jokes and the memes and the whatever about white men are trash and all men are trash.

Certainly, maybe we can learn from the fact that like bullying anybody, even if they have a lot of power as a group, maybe affected how they felt included. Like that's just human nature. They went where they felt included. And we could certainly work on that a little bit maybe. But he offered them hierarchy. He said, no, you will be over other people. I'm going to get rid of those enemies. And I'm only – I had the Guatemala example because I was at –

And question, is that fair?

I don't, I don't think it is. Is that fair to them? If you were them? Well, it's not fair to them. It's not fair to them, but it's also a fall. I was like, you guys, he's not going to know the difference. Right. He's not going to know the difference between you who came here for college, got your views of the straight way, did all your paperwork perfectly. And now you live here and you married an American man and you have children. So you think that you're safe. You won't be. They, when Natalie taught cello in some of the schools in Maryland, there was ice knocked on her door one day and was like, we're pulling the 16 year old kid out. Oh my God. And it was because he, you know what I mean? Like,

that is the kind of shit that happened under Trump and will happen again. He does not know or care. It's a numbers game for him. It's a numbers game. So that was the thing with why I'm saying like people believed this mass deportation thing. People in the queer community were like, we're being attacked all the time. I don't feel safe. I'm sick of this.

And they were more than willing to feed folks like Dylan Mulvaney to the wolves and be like, she's not us and let her take all of the hate that we get, right? Or whoever the trans mascot was at the time that they were willing to sacrifice. These are the things that happened because it was like people trying to be everything to everyone. And I get that.

You're absolutely right. And I think that, look, the left attacks itself rather than speaks to itself. And I'm not saying everyone has to get on the same page, but there just isn't really a level of respect amongst the left. And you see the way they demonized all Jews after October 7th. And it's like, why would people want to be part of your party? Why would they want to

It's a very easy sell for the Republicans to tell men, here, come over here. The water's warm. We're going to give you all the power that you've deserved all this time. These bitches are yelling at you when they should just be giving you access to their bodies without question. So we're going to teach you that. We're going to try to create that ideology and that culture. And there was no delivery system for the things that you're saying about he's not going to know the difference between immigrants because there isn't a trusted...

ecosystem because it's the mainstream media who no one trusts anymore. I know, right.

So, and then the last part of this that sort of fractured in the Democratic Party or on the left, if you want to say, was that being on the left, I feel like up until October 7th, really, was like, okay, we're all on the left. We have different varying levels of left. I would get called like a neolib sometimes or like a Hillary Clinton lib or whatever. But you were a former Republican. I was a former Republican. And also, like, I'm a millennial. Like, that's about our age was sort of the neolib thing. Those neoliberal –

cultural values are hitting really hard right about now. Okay. So I was like, you know what? So they're like, you know, whatever. And then I was like, I don't actually, you know, totally, I think I'm probably a little bit more leftist. I'm not so far leftist that I'm libertarian, but there was a lot of like, but it was kind of like, all right, well, we're all over here and everybody's kind of like thinks they're, you know, more, more morally pure than the next, um,

Then came the October 7th thing. Then came using the word Zionist as a slur. Then came like complete distrust in any figure that anybody thought was any kind of good, whether it was me or Elizabeth Booker Houston or Angela Davis, right? The kids on TikTok were like, no, you're not good enough. You failed us. You're a liar. You're aligned with the elite. You're whatever. But Osama bin Laden, they will entertain. And Osama bin Laden, and even when...

Even when they were like Osama bin Laden had some points and it was like, no, he didn't. He didn't. Wait, no, they don't mean that and tried to shield them from all of the hate they were getting for that. It didn't matter. Right. So there was all this. And then from this comes the greatest grifter of all time, Jill Stein, followed by Cornel West and RFK Jr. Right. And they sort of created a coalition together that removed the permission structure to publicly identify as a Democrat or a liberal or a Harris supporter without being actively attacked or

with whatever slur they could come up with. This movement was deeply anti-Black, anti-queer, anti-science, anti-climate, anti-everything that the far left says that they are allegedly for, to the point that many of the people who started on the RFK Jr. campaign did end up in red hats by election day. And we've seen the pictures of them, and we know that that was true, because they went from feeling a little bit included in some power and validation for their super extreme leftist behaviors and beliefs...

which are extremely rooted in white supremacy and exclusion and in the idea of a revolution where we burn it down and sacrifice the marginalized first for whatever rebuild you think was going to happen that's definitely not coming –

No, that's the thing. They just lost all their power. They absolutely did. And I, and you deserve it. And the thing that they, or they get their power because they're just going to be, no, this is what they're doing now. Right? So you got it.

Fucking abandoned Harris, she got it. Jill Stein voter, she got it. You wanted to punish the black lady and you did. You either voted against her, you voted for whoever, or you didn't vote at all. She got 60, I think she's at 68 million votes right now. Biden got 81. That means 15 million people stayed home. And those are the people I want to like kind of zero in on as the casualty of the third party voter movement and this leftist online bullshit stuff that happened. Because now the Jill Stein voters are saying, I added it up.

And it was only a million and a half votes. And that wouldn't have won her the election in any swing state. So I'm not responsible, actually. And I'm like, but you are, June. You are in that chair. Do you know what that's from? No. But you are, Blanche. You are in that chair. For all my Broadway people, you know what it is. So you are. You are responsible because not only did you use your vote for whatever moral superior thing,

you think that you got from doing that. You bummed the fuck out of people. You participated in voter suppression techniques. You spread Russian and Iranian propaganda and people stayed home. And,

Every day that you spent online getting millions of views, trashing Kamala Harris, Democrats, making fun of people who were trying, making fun of people who believed that they could fight Donald Trump, making fun of people who did anything active or to try and stop Donald Trump from becoming president again. You are responsible for a share of the 15 million Biden voters that stayed home. And those were the young people.

And those were the young people. Because that's what young people were watching on TikTok. They made them apathetic and think that these people were in any way equal or that the outcomes of their different administrations would be close to each other.

You told them their vote didn't matter. You told them the system was rigged. You told them to stay the fuck home, and they did. Now, I'm not saying that the Jill Stein voters are responsible for all 15 million, but you are responsible for a share of those 15 million people who stayed home. I'm just saying whoever these third party, the contrarian movement of leftist online, you are responsible for the people who stayed home. You are responsible for the people who never even tried because you told them it wasn't worth it.

and she's responsible, and I'm responsible, and everybody else is responsible too. But you are not just responsible, and you do not get to absolve yourself by saying, my one vote wouldn't have mattered because it wasn't just your one vote. It was the way you ran your fucking mouth online for the last –

year and especially the last three months to disenfranchise people and make them think that they should submit to their despair, that they should give up on the idea of a cooperative government and sit the fuck home. So you are responsible for some of that. And I'm going to make a TikTok about this and I'm sure it's going to light them up, but that is the goddamn truth and we have to learn from that. I hope that you light them up and I hope that

All of these people who thought that they were flexing, they did not understand what power is about, what electoral power is about. And they did not understand the stakes of people in America, people in America, your neighbors.

the lack of regard, the privilege in that situation to be able to say, you know what? I'm not going to vote for the better alternative, even for Gaza. My dad voted for Kamala Harris as a defense vote because he wants to be Republican again someday. Even he understood that it wasn't about, it wasn't just about Kamala or Trump. It was about democracy or four years of fascism and struggle. The thing is like, I was so mad and I was so aggravated. Fascism doesn't usually just like stop at the end of four years, but like,

But I was so mad and aggravated. And then I remembered something that my therapist said, which was, when your drunk aunt shows up to Thanksgiving and is rude to you for the 30th Thanksgiving in a row, you can't be surprised. Okay? She's going to show up drunk. We tried to save people who are addicted to drama and addicted to contrarianism from

From hitting rock bottom, and of course you hit rock bottom because you always do. People always hit rock bottom before they understand. So is the world over? No. We saw tons of wins. Missouri has a fucking abortion protection and voted for Trump for president. And also Brooks beat Larry Hogan. There were incredible wins for progress and Donald Trump won.

So it's not over and whatnot. It is going to be hard. It's going to be harder than it needed to be. And I'm going to have to pick up slack for the contrarians that I also suffered under for the last three months. But we're going to do it.

What I think is that that reign is over. I don't give a fuck what any of those people say. Call me a Fed. Call me an op. Call me a Zionist. Call me a whatever you want. I don't care. I literally don't care because you gave up your power and there is nothing that bears out that anything that they achieved or tried to achieve was accomplished by what they did.

Where is she today? Not all revolutions are successful. Where is Jill Stein today? Where's Cornel West today? Where are they today? In her box to come out in four years. Exactly. She left you in the woods. She took your money. She took your power. And she left you in the woods as she always did, as we told you she would. We said that candy is poison.

And you were like, well, I want a taste for myself. That's a good place to end. I know my Jill Stan. I hope every one of our listeners is like, yeah. And look, you know what? Or if you're not happy with that, let me know too. I mean, that's the thing is like we're adults actually and we can have difficult conversations. And you can be like, V, I know you feel that way. I feel this way. Like I would love to hear from you guys about how you're feeling. I hope that all the people who, as you say, maybe suffered under the contrarian regime were

will now get to be the predominant voice. Because being cynical and avoiding facts and refusing to engage with people on a conversation, that is not American either. You got to look at what you get, right? You can't eat a box of donuts and go, well, someday I'll have muscles. It doesn't work that way, right? And that's what they did. They were like, well, I'm going to punish Kamala Harris

And then she'll be sorry that she didn't prioritize an arms embargo. She's not sorry. She's the vice president. We are all sorry now. And so is Gaza, because Donald Trump has said and was very active in saying that'll be beautiful waterfront property.

So from the river to the sea will in fact be Israel from the river to the sea, and the Palestinians will suffer at a much greater clip because you had to have some sort of full morality when it came to voting, when it came to defense, and when it came to understanding the structures of power. And Donald Trump will also probably make sure that the phrase from the river to the sea can get you arrested. So best of luck.

There's that. And he came out and said, not only is he going to make Gaza a parking lot, but he will refuse to allow Palestinians or during, he's actively naming them in his Muslim ban, which he said day one, he's going, that's what I'm saying. He named them in his Muslim ban, which he said day one is going back on the books and will be expanded. There will be no asylum for any Muslims. There will be no coming here, nothing. And they will be a part of the deportation. And where are you going to go to?

I think this election was the election of people who make short-term decisions versus understand long-term consequences. And so now this new group of people will unfortunately experience their maybe first time of long-term consequences. Like we had under a Bush presidency as millennials or whatever, we learned elections have consequences. They are now going to learn what those consequences are. And perhaps next time we'll understand a little bit more about how things work.

And sometimes you get to be the offensive and have an awesome candidate like Barack Obama, who is promising progress and change, who you guys hate now. He's not enough for you now. And it's only been a couple of years now. And sometimes you're on the defense, right? And it matters that you show up at the barricade and hold back the wolves of fascism. And they didn't want to do that. They said, no, showing up to the barricade to hold back the wolves of fascism might make me look like a soy boy and I'm not willing to do it. With that,

Until next time. It can't be that. That can't be the end. No, it is. It is. That's the end. That's the end. Tune in on Tuesday. We're going to have a better episode for you where we get into the good news. But we had to get this off our chest. And I'm sure at this point, this is kind of like the righteous indignation, like anger that a lot of us just want to swirl in. Come Tuesday, we're going to go through the wins and what happens next in this election because there was a lot to celebrate when it comes to the down ballot, when it comes to state legislatures. And it also...

It still blows my mind and I haven't quite figured out how we got the first trans woman in Congress the same year that we got Donald Trump's second presidency. Because officials represent their constituencies. And look, I don't know the biography of this person, but what campaign did they run? We'll get into it on Tuesday. So make sure you tune in over the weekend. Take some time for yourself. Go look at a tree.

And like I did, sit down and eat a donut quietly. It really, it healed me in a way that I wasn't sure was even possible. So until next time, I'm Vita Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream.

American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candice Monega and Bridget Schwartz. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Betches News and follow me, Sammy Sage at Sammy and V at Under the Desk News. And of course, send us your emails to AmericanFeverDream at Betches.com. Betches.