Heather Cox Richardson

reframing of our country to be against somebody like Obama.

And that, by the way, looks a great deal more like the long-term rise of something like the elite Southern enslavers who managed to get a whole bunch of people to stay behind them even though that economic system was grinding them into the ground, grinding poor white farmers into the ground.

Yes, it's possible.

And certainly, you know, there were many people who were frustrated by the fact Obama was not as aggressive as he could have been about embracing sort of those old traditional let's take on big money and so on.

But I'm not entirely sure that one is productive to look back to that.

But two, one of the things about Lincoln and about Theodore Roosevelt and about FDR is that the people really created them.

You know, in each one of those cases, those were people who met the moment not because they were somehow specially anointed by God.

They were certainly very bright people.

Right.

But the American people were ready for them.

And I think in some ways maybe you could say the American people were ready for Donald Trump.

because he was embracing and articulating what a lot of people on the radical right had been conditioned to believe for 40 years.

So, yes, it is.

I mean, it goes all the way back to our founding, but so does the other song.

And I guess that's the point that I'm always trying to make is that when we sing that other song... Mm-hmm.

a number of things happen.

One, the economy is better.

And when the economy is better, people, I mean, this is a connection few people recognize.

When the economy is better, race and gender relations get better.

You know, those two things do go hand in hand.