Ron Brownstein
speaker
109 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Ron Brownstein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
We're okay. I mean, we were packed and ready to go, but the evacuations never got down as far south as us. They really kind of stopped in Santa Monica. But, you know, Tim, I mean, like everybody else, we know people who have just been utterly devastated about this. I mean, when you think about it, there were the two largest fires.
One was on the kind of the, you know, the heart of the west side and one was on kind of the heart of the east side. So it feels like everybody in L.A., knows people who have been displaced or face these unimaginable losses. And it's, it's, it's going to be a long road back for, you know, not only the city as a whole, but for so many individuals, it's just a tough time.
I think that there was both because they were both a dependent variable of the larger dynamic. And the larger dynamic was that a considerable majority of the country was dissatisfied with the results they got from the Biden presidency. And in the normal hydraulics of American politics voted for the party that was not in the White House.
I have said, and I believe the most shocking thing about this election was how normal it was. I mean, you go through, given that Donald Trump is anything but a normal candidate, and yet voters more or less treated him as one. In that, through American history, as I said, when people are unhappy with the way things are going, They vote for the other party.
And, you know, we saw in both the exit polls and the AP vote cast, which are our two main sources so far. We'll get more later on what voters did and why. You know, and they used to be Coke and Pepsi, you know, like kind of this rivalry. But they ended up being very, very similar in this election in terms of what they came back with and what they found. Almost identical.
And they both found that roughly 60 percent of Americans disapproved of Joe Biden's job performance and 80 percent plus of those disapprovers voted for Trump. They found that 70% of Americans described the economy as negative in negative terms, and 70% of those people voted for Trump. That was essentially what we have seen through American history.
You may have seen the one data point that really underscored this to me was in 2008 when Barack Obama won to succeed the unpopular outgoing president of the other party, right? 62% of voters who said the country was on the wrong track voted for him.
In 2024, when Donald Trump won to succeed the unpopular outgoing president of the other party, wait for it, 62% of voters who said the country was on the wrong track voted for him. For all the things that make Donald Trump a distinctive candidate.
I mean, all of the personal baggage, all of the remarks that could alienate various groups, all of the extreme policy proposals, enough of the electorate treated him as if he was Dwight Eisenhower after Harry Truman or Warren Harding after Woodrow Wilson. I mean, maybe that's a better analogy than Dwight.
Yes, exactly. Exactly. You know, so or Grover Cleveland again after Benjamin Harrison, you know, McKinley after Cleveland. Like basically, you know, there are other things going on. I mean, clearly the long term shift among non-college, non-white men is something that Democrats have to worry about. But if you ask me, what was the biggest thing that decided this election?
it was that a distinct, a considerable, a comfortable majority of Americans were dissatisfied with the Biden presidency and voted for the other party in a reflection of the historic hydraulics of American politics. And one last point that I think really underscores that,
Which is, you know, as I have written, Trump won a substantial number of votes from people who still expressed significant doubts about him and his agenda. Right. I mean, I didn't go back to my stories to look, but basically somewhere between one sixth and one fifth of his voters would agree with sentiments like he was too extreme. Or he would steer the country in an authoritarian direction.
Or he lacks the character to be president. You know, he won a higher share of women who identified as pro-choice in 2024 after Dobbs than he did in 2020 before Dobbs. OK, more than a quarter. Just let that sink in for a minute.
A quarter of Latinos, more than a quarter of Latinos who said they oppose mass deportation voted for him. And what all of these different data points tell me is that the dissatisfaction, primarily over inflation, to some extent on the border, just simply outweighed at this moment voters' hesitations and concerns about Trump. I've been thinking about this.
When you go through all of the results, the county results, the state results, all of these exit poll and vote cast results, it's almost like you're sitting in an archaeological dig. And you are picking up little pieces of broken pottery and you're dusting them off and trying to see how they fit together. You know, that's what it feels like to me after elections.
And this is my 11th presidential election. But to me, like there was one data point that was like the master shard. It was like the Rosetta Stone. And I'll tell you what it was. I got the exit poll people to run this for me. 36% of all voters, so we're talking about a lot of people, a big chunk of voters, 36% of all voters said they were pro-choice, but viewed the economy as only fair or poor.
Okay. So like, to me, that was kind of the battle of the bulge. I mean, that was Harris's best argument. Trump is a threat to your rights, particularly on reproductive rights and Trump's best argument, which is that the Biden administration has mismanaged the economy. And in that collision of strength against Trump, Trump basically broke even.
In the exit poll, he won 50% among voters who were both pro-choice and negative on the economy. In the exit poll, he beat Harris by three. In the AP vote cast, she beat him by two. But either way, it meant that vastly more voters who were pro-choice voted for him than voted for Republican candidates in 2022 because they prioritized the economy more.
And that just could not be overcome, particularly in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Last, I'm sorry, I'm filibustering you here, but really this kind of really underscores it. Among white women without a college degree, right? They are just crucial to how those states turn out, right? Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. They're always crucial to how those states turn out.
Among white women without a college degree who supported legal abortion, but described the economy in negative terms. You know how they broke? Two to one for Trump. And that basically tipped those states, even though Democrats had $120 million program.
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