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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Well, you know, his overall national total vote was what, like about what was seventy nine million versus like, you know, he he got seventy eight. He got more votes than he did last time. But there was also a significant element of Biden voters who didn't come back. And I guess I have not gotten this engaged in this debate because I feel like that both things are like two sides of the same coin.
It's like the people who were disappointed in the outcomes of the Biden administration. Some of them were people who voted for him in 2020 and didn't come back. And some of them were new people who came out and voted for Trump. But it's still like either side of the ledger is still being driven.
It's not like they're still being driven by largely the same force, which is, you know, people didn't like what they got out of the last four years. And they thought Trump would do better on the things they care most about, which overshadowed the continuing hesitations many of them still had about him.
I mean, just kind of let it sink in that Trump won a higher share of women who identified as pro-choice in 24 than he did in 2020, okay? And it wasn't like abortion was less relevant in 24 than it was in 20.
And it was just that for enough voters, their immediate circumstance just was more important. American Bridge spent, I think it was $150 million on a program aimed solely at non-college white women in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
And Harris did no better than Biden, maybe a little worse among them, you know, after all of that effort, because like no matter what messages you were driving, these were people who felt that their life just didn't work at the moment.
Like, I'm not minimizing that cultural issues were a problem on some fronts for Democrats, although I am in the camp to think the problem was more one of voters making judgments about your priorities rather than making decisions on those issues themselves. But either way...
It has created a consensus, I think, among people who do politics for a living for Democrats, that Democrats have to figure out a way to focus on the economic struggles of middle class and working class families, avoid the bait of getting drawn into endless culture wars with Trump, and hammer away the message that he's really about enriching his rich buddies, not helping you.
Don't forget, in terms of thinking about how that may play out, Trump's lowest approval rating in his first term, besides January 6th, was very clearly around the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That was his lowest point as president. So I think that's where Jeffries wants to go. I think that's where Schumer wants to go.
But as you say, the discipline to avoid having the next two years defined by a series of culture war battles would be something of a break in behavior for Democrats.
Yep.
Hey, you know what? I was in the pool for Reagan's inauguration in 1985 that had to be moved indoors. Really?
Yeah, it was like, you know, super, super cold. I was working then at National Journal. And somehow, you know, it was our turn in the White House pool. And being very junior, I think I was the only person in the office. And like the phone rings and it's the White House. And it's like, you know, you guys are the pool. We're moving the inaugural inside. You want to go?
Yeah, I'll go to the inaugural. And it was so cramped that I was sitting on the, you know, how you sit on the edge.
It was inside the Capitol. I think it was in the rotunda, you know, and there was a press riser with like, you know, all these cameras packed in, which would normally be spread out on the mall. And I was sitting next to a senator, like because we were all there was no place for anybody, you know. So there you go. Trump, you know, will not be the biggest crowd ever, I guess.
So there's a great political scientist at Yale named Stephen Skowronek, who wrote a book in 1993, he's updated a few times, that argues that presidents fail or succeed based not only on their innate talents, but where they fall in the cycle of competition between the parties. There's kind of a waxing and waning of the strength of the parties through American history.
great realigning elections of 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, arguably 1968, to some extent 1992, where the balance of power in the electorate shifts toward one side. And Skowronek basically argues that the presidents that we consider the weakest through American history are
are those who come in at the tail end, kind of the ass end of one of these coalitions, a coalition that has seen better days, but is able to squeeze out one more victory. So that would be John Adams in 1800, John Quincy Adams, his son in 1824, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan for the Democrats in the 1850s, Hoover in 1928, Carter in 1976.
H.W. would kind of count, too. Yeah. I mean, H.W. would kind of count, too. There was a shift in the electorate in 92. Democrats won the White House in four of the next six elections. won the popular vote in five of those next six elections. Trump wins in 2016, showing clear evidence of kind of, you know, fracturing the Democratic coalition.
And then Biden comes in in 2020 and looks like he's put all the pieces back together. Right. And you have that kind of Clinton era coalition of strong support among minorities, growing support among college educated whites and just enough support among non-college whites, particularly in the Rust Belt. And in many ways, this is reminiscent of Carter. Right. Because.
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