Episode SummaryThe 2024 presidential election is over, and the results are not what many of us hoped for. Despite engaging in treason against the United States on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump will become president once again. While there are plenty of things that Kamala Harris could have done better, she was up against several larger obstacles, chief among them the price inflation that has troubled every country in the world after the Covid-19 pandemic and also the gigantic far-right media apparatus that relentlessly tells more than 100 million Americans that Democrats are controlled by Satan and falsely claims that the United States is currently in a recession. Undoubtedly, her being an Asian and Black woman was an obstacle as well.Despite all of these difficulties, however, Harris made a number of solid choices, including speaking clearly about the threat of Trump’s fascistic politics, proudly articulating why reproductive rights matter, picking populist Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, refusing to get dragged into the mud with Donald Trump’s bigotry, and running an incredible social media presence.But none of these tactical successes were sufficient to overcome Democrats’ refusal to invest in advocacy media or to ensure that social gains by one group do not negatively impact those of others. During their administration, Harris and President Joe Biden rolled out a number of policies that undeniably helped millions of regular Americans but instead of frequently and coherently explaining what these policies were and why they mattered, both seemed to think that good ideas would speak for themselves. They did not.Even if they had spoken about them earlier, whatever advantage Harris might have enjoyed from these policies was squandered, when she reoriented her campaign to prioritize outreach to Republicans over pressing the case against income inequality and social stagnation.Joining us to talk about what went wrong is Jim Carroll. He’s an associate editor at Flux and also has his own site, The Hot Screen. The video of this discussion is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.Flux is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please stay in touch.Related Content* Trump’s victory isn’t a mandate for his authoritarian agenda, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise* Democrats failed to create an advocacy ecosystem, Kamala Harris suffered for it* The science of why the ‘poorly educated’ prefer Republicans* Unlikely voters decided the 2024 election, Trump bet his campaign that he could reach them* Searchable 2024 exit poll survey results* Compare the 2016, 2020, and 2024 exit polls* The mainstream media has been ‘sanewashing’ Republicans long before Trump came along* How Republican elites created a new, politicized version of the ‘Satanic Panic’Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:04 — Pro-democracy arguments and their effectiveness04:52 — Economic conditions and their influence11:08 — The role of media in shaping public opinion14:22 — Trump’s fake economic proposals sounded more ambitious than Harris's at first glance16:47 — Democrats cannot campaign on policy alone19:32 — How media shape public opinion of the economy22:24 — The right’s “regime” narrative is a powerful response to concerns about protecting democracy30:44 — Why social justice needs economic justice to survive32:39 — Kamala Harris's failed pivot toward disaffected Republicans36:26 — The impact of non-voters and younger voters38:00 — Surfing the media wave rather than trying vainly to control it42:31 — Many lessons of Obama and Clinton victories are not relevant to today46:40 — Mainstream media’s failure to tell the full truth about Republicans48:20 — Democrats cannot rely on the mainstream media53:01 — Cause for hope: There’s plenty of money to create a progressive media infrastructureAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: People are floating lots of different ideas about what happened and [00:01:00] and I think we should say perhaps at the outset that, judging the total, the complete vote totals at this point.As we're recording on the 11th of November, it's perhaps a bit premature because there are still a lot of provisional ballots and overseas ballots that haven't been counted yet. But at this point it does seem like that Donald Trump's going to have a very narrow popular vote. When the first time since 2004 for a Republican and, again, well, the totals are going to fluctuate a bit, but it looks like the Trump kept roughly the same amount of voters that he had last time in 2020, whereas Kamala Harris lost a significant percentage of the people who had voted for Joe Biden or couldn't retain them, or they ...
