Now What?

00:00

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Why Do I Care? I'm your host, Favalora. And I'm Alex Gervais. And today we will be discussing the results of the 2024 election. So without further ado, let's get right to it. My heart is full today, full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country, and full of resolve.

00:30

The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for. But hear me when I say, hear me when I say the light of America's promise will always burn bright. What you just heard there was Kamala Harris conceding the 2024 presidential election.

01:00

An abbreviated election season, only 100 days for Kamala Harris to try to put together a campaign and try to present herself to the American people. We now know that that mission ultimately, disastrously, failed. Yeah, I don't... It's gonna be a somber episode. Yeah. Try to stay chipper, but we are recording this, what, two days after?

01:28

and this is being recorded Thursday, it's gonna be uploaded Monday, so we don't know the house yet, but it's not looking good. We don't know the exact results, but I think most importantly, we don't have the concrete results on demographic groups. We have good ideas based on exit polls, but we don't have concrete facts on those. So anything we talk about will, for the most part, be speculation, but pretty solid assumptions, I would say. Yeah, and I mean, just these last couple days have been hard, I'm sure, for anybody who listens to us right now.

01:56

There's been really a lot of soul searching going on within the Democratic Party, thinking about, you know, what does our coalition look like right now? And it's just a question of how do you move forward, not only to 2028, but to three months from now, right? How do you try to preserve our democracy in the face of not only a Trump presidency, not only

02:25

a Republican trifecta but a popular mandate. The American people saying, yes, destroy democracy. We value the price of eggs over our voting rights. Yeah, so just to summarize, just to be sure everyone's on the same page, Kamala Harris lost the election, lost the popular vote, lost all of the seven swing states. The Republicans picked up control of the Senate.

02:51

And it is very likely that they will also control the House. So that means that they will be able to pass almost anything that they want to. Democrats really don't have too much to do in order of opposition. And it's just, honestly, hoping that Republican moderates are more worried about re-election than they are passing these very extreme bills that Donald Trump and the rest of his goons want to push through. Yeah. And.

03:18

I think really the most striking thing we saw this election, for me it wasn't Trump winning the swing states. I think everybody acknowledged that was a possibility. You and I had him winning North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona. For me it was the margins by which not only he won states, but the margins by which he lost states. If you look at like Illinois, you know, if you look at New Jersey, you look at Virginia, places that over the past three election cycles have been...

03:47

consistently purely democratic. Illinois has been democratic since the 80s, right? These are places that Kamala Harris only won by three to five points. That is absolutely unprecedented and absolutely worrying for the future of the Democratic Party. Yeah, I think, honestly, if Trump won barely, I would be more okay with that. Like, I would rather a very close election in which it all went down to Pennsylvania and Trump won by 10,000 votes. Yeah.

04:16

I would be more okay with that because it's like, all right, we tried our best, we got close, but ultimately the votes weren't there and I still would have some faith. But the fact that it was this much, the fact that the popular vote, the fact that there were shifts in Massachusetts, shift in California, New York, all these very heavily democratic states had these extreme shifts.

04:44

Yeah. And, you know, if the election had ended up being close, you wouldn't be looking at a Republican Senate right now. You would have Senator John Tester serving his fourth term. You would have Senator Sherrod Brown serving a fourth term. You'd have Senator Colin Allred in Texas. Right. So you look across the board, you see these campaigns down ballot that were well run by people who deserve to win, who didn't.

05:10

And that adds, you know, a whole kind of other layer of heartbreak for a lot of Democrats watching fantastic public servants, you know, the Mary Peltolas of the world go down swinging. Yeah. So it's it's crushing. But I do think that it means something. It shows us something. It's not that like we lost by so much. We have to. We can't just be like, oh, the other side's stupid. They only want this one issue.

05:40

We do have to do some soul searching. And we do ultimately have to say, okay, the fact that Republicans were able to convince this many people about these things, we have to understand that something that they did worked. Well yeah, and it challenges what we thought we knew about politics as a whole, right? There's been a lot made in online circles about how materialism has kind of fallen apart in terms of electability, that people don't really care about their material conditions, that that isn't.

06:08

what's going to decide their vote, which is just so insane thinking that this, because it was an election that was about the economy, but it was about people's idea of the economy, not their economic reality. And that kind of means that we have an American electorate that is unbounded to what's actually going on, which I think people could have said that for the last eight years, right? But it just makes me very deeply concerned that the Democratic Party has no idea how to message to Americans anymore.

06:36

Yeah, that's the thing. Not only the messaging, but also what is being messaged. I do think that I believe in most of what the Democratic Party stands for, but it is very clearly not what many Americans want. And that's, I think, the most striking thing. Yes, I do think that Democrats as a whole are in a messaging disadvantage. I feel like most of the top non-political communities

07:06

lean more Republican like we see like Joe Rogan, like the NELT boys, you know, Andrew Tate and all these people who aren't political, but they still can get political and they can sway voters. And that is something that concerns me, is that it's not necessarily that we aren't trying hard enough to message to voters. It's that what we are messaging doesn't matter.

07:35

to the people that don't want to hear it. Yeah. You know, in that same vein, you saw Bernie Sanders put out a statement that I believe has reached over 500,000 likes on Twitter at this point, essentially criticizing the Democratic Party as a whole and saying that there needs to be a new way forward based around essentially left economic populism that really takes into account the working class. You know, he talked about how

08:03

The white working class went for Trump in 2016, but now this year it was the Latino working class. It was the black working class, right? And when you are a Democratic party that for the first time lost voters who make under $50,000 a year, by one point to Donald Trump, you have to do soul searching. You have to completely and fundamentally redefine what your economic policy is and how you are showing it off to the voters. Yeah, and I think that

08:31

A large part of it isn't necessarily even the policy. Because it's very, like, the policy is better for people who are lower income. For Trump, he would cut the taxes on the rich and it would become the burden of the, you know, the, I don't know, bottom 75, 80%, 90% of America. It's the way in which this is marketed. It's that it feels to me, obviously I'm not working class. But it feels to me.

09:00

Like I could very clearly understand how somebody who is working class every day and who's struggling with money, and they hear Democrats being like, oh, the economy's getting better, like look at this, like the Dow Jones, and like all these like number things and whatever, and then Donald Trump's like, oh yeah, the economy sucks, I'll fix it. The economy was getting better objectively, but if you haven't felt that yet,

09:25

You feel like the Democrats are being rich elite of snobs who are using their college education to look down on you and that the Republican candidate and the Republican Party is the party for you. And that is something that needs to be addressed and needs to be addressed quickly. Well, yeah. And I mean, in his remarks, Joe Biden even almost kind of backwardsly alluded to it. You know, he talked a little bit about how, like, Democrats...

09:54

I'm trying to remember his exact words. But he kind of made a similar point about how economic policies that we have passed, the legislation we passed over the past four years won't really bare its teeth until 10 years later. And that's not a winning recipe. Like doing good things for the American people is fantastic, right? The Inflation Reduction Act was monumental, but the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act was monumental, but those changes don't happen until the next administration.

10:24

And then you know what happens? It gets the Trump gets a claim that Donald Trump takes credit for in 2026. The new rollbacks on Medicare, our Medicare pricing, right, where they are now allowed to negotiate directly with the people who are making those drugs. That's when that happens. Right. Donald Trump is going to take all the credit for that. He's going to say, I lowered your insulin cost when it was Joe Biden, when it was the Democrats. And so I think it is time for the Democratic Party to realize how governing actually works.

10:50

and that you need to take advantage of what you can do when you're in office and actually run on that instead of giving the other side really cannon fodder for the next four years. Yeah, and also I do think that part of that will be the messaging because like, I understand that if you're Democrat in power and you pass all this stuff, you wanna say like, oh yeah, it's made it better now, even though you know that isn't true, but that just makes you sound even more out of touch. You have to say like, hey, I know things are really hard right now.

11:18

We're trying to help you right now, but looking forward, we have secured you X, Y, and Z. Stuff like that. Admitting that right now, it's not looking too great. And I think that honestly, I think that was part of, what's weird about this election is that there's no one thing to blame. Yeah. But I do think that part of it was Democrats messaging, was that, oh no, the economy's better. Yeah, objectively it's better.

11:48

Everything, you know, prices, gas prices are down. You know, inflation's where we want it to be. We're, you know, producing at a higher level. Like all these things, like objectively, economically, yes. But that hasn't really been felt by the American people. And that's something that if you, if you say, you know, like imagine you go to a doctor with a broken leg and the doctor's like, oh, well, like the leg's

12:17

fixed by saying like, you know, it's on a cast like, oh, it's fixed now. But you're like, no, it's like, it's really not because like it's still hurting me. And I'm not used to this yet. It's not like, well, yes, like technically, scientifically, mathematically, whatever it is fixed, like they've done what they're gonna do and it's going to fix itself in time. It's just, it's not a good message. And that's something that people need to understand and wrap their heads around. And I wish Kamala Harris went out and said, yeah, the economy is not great right now. It will get better.

12:47

but you need to be patient and this is what I'm gonna do the second I take office to make it better for you now. Yeah, and there was also, you know, she refused to run away really in any point from the Biden administration and it felt like there was no attempt at voter education, which I know is immensely hard in a hundred days, but she had opportunities like during that town hall, right where it was only her speaking to the American people. She had opportunities during the debate to speak to the American people.

13:15

At one point, I think you have to explain what a tariff is. I think you have to tell them exactly what's going on because you're never gonna have that opportunity again. Even in her concession speech, she doesn't go and say, this is what's gonna happen over the next four years. And I understand why I understand that you wanna have this whatever era of bipartisanship and look to the future. But these are awful people who are taking over our government and you're refusing to tell the American people what is gonna go wrong. And that feels extremely bad to me.

13:44

Yes, but I guess counterpoint, like I completely agree that you do have to say, oh, these guys are gonna do wrong. But what I have seen, and what many people I've talked to, what I see on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter comments, which let me be clear, like obviously that isn't the most accurate representation, but it's a whole lot more accurate than, you know, talking to other Trinity College liberal elitist student. You know, like this is like, it's a much better thing to like be able to talk to those people. And basically the consensus, real people and online people and whatnot.

14:14

is that they don't know what Democrats are. They just feel like it's the Republican Party and the anti-Republican Party. And that is completely fair. That is a complete fair assessment. I know some of Kamala Harris' policies that I could name because I've looked into them, researched them. If I didn't do that, what would I know? Yeah. I don't know. You look at the message, messaging for Democrats is like, oh, he's bad for democracy. He's a danger for this, danger for that. Okay, imagine you're a voter who saw Trump

14:44

have four years, democracy still standing, somewhat, but ultimately it is still standing. And then there's this guy who's running on policies or concepts of policies, and then there's somebody who's, you know, it doesn't make sense and it's messy. And Democrats need to be focused more on talking about why they are good, less than they are bad. And I understand that's hard, because they're up against somebody who's so unbelievably bad, and does all these awful things. You have to talk about that.

15:11

But at the same point, you really just need to talk about who you are and what you want. Because I guarantee you, you go walk down the street and you say, name three Trump policies. They're going to be like, you know, oh, like, let's build the wall. We're going to make it harder for whatever, you know, abortion bans, tariffs, and all this stuff. And you go name like a Harris policy or a Democratic policy, and they're going to be like, um...

15:32

give us abortion rights? Yeah. Yeah, and it's a wider issue that is not only on the Harris campaign, as we've said, that it's Democrats as a whole, not only in their messaging when they're running, but when they're actually governing, right? I would venture to say that there are maybe five or six democratic states that are actually governed well in this country, right? I would say that like the state we come from in Massachusetts.

15:57

The legislature does not do a good job. It doesn't do enough because they're complacent. They think that they're safe. Yeah, there was a ballot question, question one, in Massachusetts. It was, should we audit the legislature? It got 72% approval. It did better than any one candidate did in the state by a wide margin on a statewide race. And that tells me a lot about the state of democratic government in this country that we are in, like, really, truly

16:27

to do our jobs correctly and that we need people who are gonna be forceful, who are gonna make the hard decisions and who are gonna do things right. And I think, you know, we've seen one of those people in Tim Walls, right? The way that he ran the Minnesota government as governor there and it's heartbreaking to see him lose and to see really the Democratic Party institution kind of forcing to put the gloves back on during the campaign and not be his forceful self. Yeah, and I think that

16:55

You kind of make a good point. Well, obviously Minnesota isn't the most swingiest of states, it's still, you know, it's not like a swing state necessarily, but it's still like, you know, like a likely D or like a lean D. And you see this is when Democrats get trifectas in close States, they do a whole lot of stuff because they know they don't have the margins to, whatever. And I think that is something that democratic cities and not cities, like Democrat, real democratic strongholds, that's the word they haven't done because they are not scared of losing, you know?

17:22

Like if I go up to you and I say, okay, you have two years to do whatever you want. You're going to do a whole lot more than I say, oh yeah, I got like the next like 30 or so years to do what you want. Like if you have 30, you're going to take it slow. You're going to talk, you're going to try to buy parts, all this stuff. No, just not like you can't do that. You need to just go and you need to make change. You need to fight through whatever you are. People don't understand how much stuff the Republicans are going to get through in these first hundred days. It's going to be like bam, bam, bam, like shoving.

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things through Congress, it's gonna be signed by Trump, there's gonna be executive orders, it's gonna be, I think, honestly, I honestly, I think it might be the most.

18:02

like rapid amount of government legislation, executive order, since maybe probably the New Deal era. I think it's like, because they understand that they have this opportunity, that they're gonna probably lose, probably the House in 2026. They are gonna do very unpopular things, and it's not looking, you know, but they're gonna be like, hey, like at least we're gonna, it's a lot harder to undo things than it is to do them. Yeah, and all of it, yeah, it's much harder to undo things.

18:31

path dependency in political science, right? Once you do one thing, it fundamentally shifts the nature of your country forever. And it's also that all of this stuff is premeditated, right? Like Project 2025 was not some kind of joke. We've touched on this in a full podcast episode. It's their plan for what they are going to do with a Republican trifecta. Democrats never do that. There is never any, you know, quote unquote, mandate for leadership, right? That's Project 2025's full name. They never make that.

18:59

They never lay out this is exactly the progressive policy that's going to go into place. Right. Like, you know, Kamala Harris tried to be specific about policy, but I feel like being specific about policy and policy actually being premeditated are very different things because that specific policy does not come with the same oomph and the same kind of forward thinking nature that Republicans are simply just beating us on right now. And I don't like the Republicans. They're doing something right.

19:28

You know, like it's kind of a shame that all like there are clearly some smart people doing very stupid things Like their strategists know what they're doing if they were able to get this many people in that party elected And I think we do have to give them credit for that I think that honestly there were some campaigns that were well run I think that the fact that Trump was able to be reelected is impressive And I feel like it's honestly a shame for America that the there are some smart people some sort of strategists and smart legislators some smart People who are just doing the wrong things

19:54

You know, I'm not saying that Republicans are smart. I'm not saying these people who want to make these bans or whatever are smart necessarily, but they know what they're doing and they're able to do it effectively. And like, I think that we underestimate them, obviously. Yeah, they're morally reprehensible, but they're immensely intelligent. You know, JD Vance, I think we were all reminded of it, when he got up on that stage during the vice presidential debate and made Americans kind of like him a little bit, even as he was saying some of the grossest stuff you've ever heard, he just did it in a Yale accent, right?

20:24

You look at a guy like Stephen Miller, who now will have unfettered and unchecked power over immigration during the Trump administration, which is absolutely insane. You know, you look at a guy like RFK, who I think is not intelligent at all, but again, will have power over HHS and is going to cause Listeria outbreaks in our food and is going to sell sell raw milk to Americans. Yeah, it's just.

20:52

They know what they want and they will do it. And I feel like that's the difference, is that Democrats don't really know what they want. Like we talk about, oh, we're gonna protect abortion rights. Okay, how? Are you gonna codify Roe? Are you gonna do exactly what Roe wanted? Because Roe said you can get an abortion the first trimester, the second trimester, if it was the risk or whatever, like some certain circumstances. And then third trimester, like no, unless the mother was going to die, unless you didn't. That is what Roe said.

21:21

If they want to codify Roe, that's one thing. But if you want to say you can have abortions for however long, if you want to do like this amount of weeks, this amount of weeks, this, this, this, this, this. It's very scattered around. But the Republicans, they want to do an abortion ban and I don't really know what the exact time is, but I'm pretty sure that they have a pretty, you know, extreme timeline for that, like eight weeks or whatever, 12 weeks, whatever it may be. I don't know that, but that's the difference. Democrats are like, oh, I want to fix the border. Okay, how, what are you going to do? Are you going to make it easier to become a citizen?

21:50

Are you going to help dreamers? Are you going to, you know, put more agents there to try to help with this, like, traffic or whatever? But you ask a Republican, they're going to say, we're going to make the border stronger. It's going to be harder to sneak in, to get in. And then we're going to deport people who are here illegally. They know what they are doing. Yeah. Yeah. Right now, for one of my classes, I'm actually, you know, comparing and contrasting the Republican and Democratic platforms of 2024. On.

22:16

Immigration specifically, the Republican platform is one page long for immigration. For Democrats, they have, I think it's six and a half pages. If you had told me that before I read them, I would have not believed you. I would have said that the Democrats have like maybe two or three bullet points and the Republicans have this long drawn out plan about exactly what they're going to do. Right? And that's the issue with messaging is that nobody knows what's going on in that Democratic plan. Nobody can give you the points about protecting DACA, about protecting DREAMers, right? Because we don't

22:44

Nobody can tell you about trying to reform the asylum system and create more legal paths to citizenship because we don't talk about it and message about it enough, or maybe the American people just don't care, but we need to find a better solution to this. And I hate to say it, but I do think the Democratic Party needs somebody like Trump at some point, somebody who is like, you are on my side or you are out. Somebody who is like Joe Manchin pulling whatever BSC would do. It's like, okay, you're out, you're done. They need, the Democratic Party needs somebody to f*** up.

23:14

fully unify everybody around them or else they were out. That's what I will say. I think that the Democrats are really just like, oh, like, yeah, like everybody, come on, like Liz Cheney, yeah, sure, like AOC, yeah, sure. You need somebody who's gonna stand up there and gonna be like, okay, you wanna be a Democrat? You're gonna do this? If you don't wanna do this, you are not in my party. Yeah, and I think it also, it has to be a combination of charisma and ideology, right? For me, a winning kind of plan for that would be

23:43

You take a guy like Gavin Newsom and you give him Bernie Sanders' politics. And suddenly you've unlocked a political machine that would hate Republicans, that would love the working class and would give Americans a brighter vision of their future, all led by a guy who would look exactly like kind of the ideal American politician. Right. Like Gavin Newsom looks like the politician they have in movies. So I just somebody like that who can really, really.

24:12

gather the base together like Trump did with the Republicans and say, OK, moderates, you can have it my way. Or again, as you said, you can have it the highway. Yes, I completely agree. And I think that in general, Republicans know that bipartisanship is dead. But Democrats are holding on to this idea. It's like, oh, we're the real party. We're going to protect what I don't know. And this kind of brings us back to the point about Democrats act like elitists.

24:43

Democrats who are like, oh no, you can't do that. Like that's against the rules or whatever. Okay, well, like this, like, Republicans are gonna do whatever they want. They're gonna do whatever they please. You have to break the rules in order to get stuff done. That being said, I'm gonna circle back to our former point about we need like a face of the party. Everybody knows Trump is the face of the Republican party. If you say, okay, who's the face of the Democratic party?

25:08

Kamala Harris, she just ran. Joe Biden's the current president. But a lot of people say like, oh, Barack Obama still. People, I think the Obamas are the most, they are still the people in the Democratic Party that A, most people recognize and B, people get excited about. And I think that is a problem. I think that you can't have that. Like you need your current leaders to be people who are able to get stuff done. And like even now.

25:37

Like Nancy Pelosi isn't in position of leadership, but you saw what she did behind the scenes and stuff. You know? And that's like no offense, obviously, to anybody in positions of leadership in the Democrat. I understand it's hard. But you need to, like, it's just so frustrating. The honestly, just like the incompetency of the Democratic Party as a whole. And this, this goes to other aspects of what is perceived wrong with the Democratic Party.

26:06

I'm not going to say that, oh, Democratic Party, they're so feelings based. That's something that the Republicans kind of be like, oh, Democrats care more about feelings. They don't want to upset anybody or hurt anybody. That's not fully true. We don't want to offend anybody. But also, like Paul said, it's kind of true. We don't want to make certain members feel upset. We don't want to have the most extreme on the left, the most centrist. We don't want to upset them.

26:36

Earlier point, to me, a little bit of offense to the Democratic Party leadership, like Jamie Harrison is not gonna re-sign the DNC chair. Oh, I don't, I'm not talking about Jamie, I'm no, I'm sorry. Sorry, with love, no. Like this, I don't know, I want him fired, I want him to be, I, I, Well, it's not just him either, it's like you go to other leaders, people who should be leaders in the party, like Kathy Hochul, who has completely bungled. Sure.

27:00

her job. And then more congressional leaders. Like I think Chuck Schumer is doing a great job. Congressional leaders. I mean, like Schumer to an extent, Hakeem Jeffries. I think he's a good speaker. I think he's a good speaker, but like what part of being speaker is, is it's knowing how to win elections, knowing how to properly fundraise and utilize resources. That is why if you look back to the Republicans, even though he was ousted Kevin McCarthy,

27:27

ended up being picked because he was such a good fundraiser. Right? And I want Hakeem Jeffries to use those skills and really make sure that the house will 100% go blue in 2026, put all of the chips on the table to try to defeat what's coming down the pipeline at us. Yeah, and it's like, there's just so much. But I think that in general, we can sum most of what we've been talking about up as.

27:56

Democrats need a strong unified leader who will have a strong unified platform, strong unified policies, not be afraid to go after Republicans, not be afraid to explain what is happening, but just unity. I think that's the thing. Like the whole Democrats in disarray is kind of true. Like honestly, like it's just like there are so many bright voices and bright people, but we need one strong ruler. We need somebody who's going to lead the party through.

28:26

Like, you know, what's gonna happen when they're inaugurated? Who's gonna be a chart? Who is the Democratic Party then? Like, who's there for us, for the party? And that's something that is deeply concerning. Yeah, and I think over these next, really the first two years of the Trump administration, you are gonna see a lot of state governors really rise to prominence in the same way they did in the first couple years of the last Trump administration. Yes, yes.

28:50

I think you are going to see Gretchen Whitmer become a household name to even more extent. Gavin Newsom will remain one. And I think actually maybe even shed a little bit of the really bad PR that's been thrown his way for years and years by Republicans. Jared Paulus from Colorado is going to become a household name. Mara Healy is going to become a household name. You are going to see these Democratic governors rise to positions of prominence and power. And I want to see a few of them really take it.

29:18

and really go with it. Jamie first. They wanna run 2028. Like Whitmer's gonna probably run 2020 and Newsome's probably gonna run 2028. Like all these things. That's kind of besides the point, but one of the best ways to kind of solidify yourself within the Democratic Party is getting stuff done. And I'm really excited for that. We have a lot to talk about, but we're gonna take a quick break. We're gonna be back for kind of the why do I care part of this podcast. And yeah.

29:47

All right, everybody. Welcome back from that short break. We're going to dive into the Why Do I Care section of this podcast. Yeah, I think for me, the reason that you should care is honestly, there's no better time to make change and to implement what you want than right after a devastating loss like this. The Democratic Party, as we know it, is going to be completely reimagined, reformed. You can either stay on the sideline and then

30:15

be like, oh, I don't really like what they produce in 2028. Or you can get involved and you can make what you want. This is the best time for people to get involved. This is the best time for activist organizations to get involved. All these things is, yes, it's a really devastating loss and it honestly really sucks for the future of our country, but this is the best opportunity for the Democratic Party to shape and to become the 21st party that we really need to see. This is what the Republicans had in...

30:44

2008, 2012, they had this. We haven't had this yet. Yeah, and I mean, you should care because it's time to get off the mat. I understand the day after feeling down and distraught. I absolutely did. But I woke up this morning with a conviction saying, we need to do something. We need to actually talk to one another. We need to actually organize. It is not enough to sit in your bed and scroll on Twitter for the next four years.

31:13

and think about what could have been in a Kamala Harris administration. You have to organize. You have to talk to other people. You have to actually go out there and be the change that you wanna be. And you have to be an advocate during a very dangerous time. You know, like both of us as white men, upper middle class families, right, we are gonna be fine. You know, we're from a blue state. Like Toby and I will be completely fine. But there are millions of Americans out there who will be targeted and hunted.

31:42

by our Republican government. And it is more important than ever that states like Massachusetts, like Connecticut, like New York, like Colorado, like California, like Washington open their doors, that they build housing, that they say, we are the place to be. If you are done with this authoritarian bullshit that they're trying to push down your throat, come to us, be a part of our coalition, and really remember what it's actually like.

32:12

to be a part of the American dream, to live life as Americans should be in a free and a just society. And it's time for blue states to make that change. Yeah, and even, like obviously yes, but also we wanna look at more strategically, the electoral college is hard, what do you do? You get more people to move to your states. Exactly. That's what you gotta do. How do you do that? You build housing and you make it somewhere that people wanna live. Already, blue states, they're just higher education.

32:38

phenomenal education rates, stronger economies, all these things, but we need to have more housing. We need people to be able to come here and to live here and to thrive here. And it's just, it's not enough to just exist. We have to be aggressive. We have to make it so that people want to come here. We see that Florida is gaining places. We see that Texas is. All these places.

33:07

Well, what do we do to fight that? We get people to come here, because we are gonna have better policies, better quality of lights. And that's something that is so unique about America, is that state by state, that's just federalism for you. Yes, it is. It's just like state by state, it varies so much. So we wanna be a state. We wanna be a party that has states that you wanna come to. You want it to be like, oh yeah, I'm in a democratic state. Nice. That's what he wants. Yeah, you know, like everyone talks about like, tax-a-tchusets or whatever, but like...

33:35

It's just, it is so far past time for blue states to let go of Nimbius policy and really talk about, as I said, building more housing, being a place where it is not unaffordable. Boston is considered the most expensive city in the United States. San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities in the United States because they refuse to build more housing. It is time to build more to really, for the first time this presidential campaign,

34:04

We had a conversation about housing, about the housing crisis that we are currently living in, about rentership rates, and that can't stop with just that one debate. Like it has to continue, and it has to be a real part of the platform going forward. Yes, we just need as a party to focus on so much, and this is something that, we talked about how honestly there's a power vacuum. So step up. Exactly. Step up.

34:32

If you're over 35, all right, you know what, throw your heart in the ranks, see what you can get done. I know it's hard, but step up. You can run for office, we can run for office. We're not going to because they're students, but we could, you know, I could drop out and I could run for office, probably wouldn't go too well, but also wouldn't go too badly. Yeah, and it's also, it's not even about running for office, right? I think that takes a certain personality that a lot of people don't have to do it successfully. It's about being involved in government. It's about...

35:00

going out there, it's about talking to your rep and saying, hey, Representative, what are you doing? And not just your congressional reps or your senators, talk to your state senators. Oh, yes. Talk to your state reps. I'm going back to Massachusetts again, but we have a state government that doesn't work. If all of us mobilized and all of us showed up at our representatives' offices, they would do stuff because they wanna be responsive to us. And if they're not, then you know what you do? You vote them out of office. Yes. It's a simple thing.

35:29

that when we are more civically involved and engaged, we can beat back the tide of fascism that is trying to overtake this country, but it's gonna take all of us. Yes, and that, you mentioned, you mentioned, you know, voting them out of office, that kind of speaks to something that happened in 2018. For Republicans, they got primaried. Yeah. From the right. Okay, well, we can primary from the left too. If there's somebody that's running for office that you think is gonna be better, nothing produces change more.

35:57

than a threat of being replaced. Absolutely. You know, if you go and you say, this is your last year here, people are gonna be like, what can I do to change that, you know? You can't get safe, you can't be comfortable. You have to go out and do stuff. And that's what we see, honestly, in many places. It's like the politicians with the best name recognition, the most power, are people that aren't gonna be there, necessarily forever. Like we talked about this.

36:27

If you're a governor in a solidly red state or solidly blue state, you're not too worried about your job security. But if you're on a swing state, you're going to do a whole lot. Like Whitmer, Shapiro, all these politicians, they're doing a lot because they know that if they don't, they're out of there. And that is the type of thing that we need to encourage. I think as a party.

36:52

we're scared of primaries because of this whole, oh party unity, party unity, we can't have this party unity. Well the best way to get party unity is to see what the party actually wants. So have primaries. Yeah, and I am hoping that this serves as a warning for the people in our party, for the people who are in a state that they considered safe blue but it's now within the margin, right? For lawmakers in New Jersey, for lawmakers in New York, for lawmakers in Illinois.

37:20

In states, in Virginia, states that should be blue by a good margin, but this time we're not blue by a good margin. Like it's time to saddle up and get stuff done. Yeah, completely agree. So that's it for this week's episode. Be sure to go to whydoicarepod.com for everything that you may need. You can still go to our YouTube channel, watch our election predictions. Boy, were they wrong. But you can still go, you can check them out, you can see what kind of the attitude was, how hopeful we sounded, how excited our voices still were.

37:49

But yeah, be sure to go, be sure to subscribe, be sure to follow us on all of the socials because we are not gonna be on the sidelines, we're gonna be very involved, so join us for a ride. Thank you guys all so much for listening and for the continued support, and have a great rest of your day.

38:05

The thing is, we weren't even that wrong. It was just the national environment that we didn't predict, right? Yeah, well, obviously. But look at, if you look at Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, right? They're all still only a one point loss across the board. But when you go to Arizona, it's five, right? When you go to Nevada,