TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Thursday, November 7th. I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day the show where we’re putting our heads down and getting back to work after a brief session of uninterrupted screaming. On today’s show, we’re going to make it. And there’s some good and bad news in Congress. So let’s get into it. And here to help me do that is our good friend, Josie Duffy Rice Josie, how are you? I’m sure everything’s normal and good and fine in Georgia. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Everything is phenomenal, Jane. I have had a great week. 

Jane Coaston: Nothing’s gone wrong. 

Josie Duffy Rice: It’s been awesome. 

Jane Coaston: No downsides. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Nothing has gone wrong at all. 

Jane Coaston: Nope. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: Nope. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: Well uh. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Glad to be here. 

Jane Coaston: To talk about things that definitely didn’t go wrong. Vice President Kamala Harris officially conceded to President elect Donald Trump on Wednesday. Harris addressed a crowd of hundreds of campaign staffers and students who gathered on the lawn of her alma mater, Howard University. And she said it was important to accept defeat. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny. And anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Ooh. It was an obvious dig at Trump, who, you may remember was not nearly as gracious a loser four years ago, to put it mildly. And who spent the entirety of this race suggesting he would again refuse to concede. Harris said that earlier on Wednesday she had called Donald Trump to congratulate him on his Election Day victory. But she also said she would keep pushing for change. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] We owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States. [cheers] And loyalty to our conscience and to our God. My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say, while I concede this election. I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Harris encouraged her supporters, especially her young supporters, to also keep fighting for the American ideals that she championed, even in the face of defeat. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] It is okay to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it’s going to be okay. On the campaign, I would often say when we fight, we win. But here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. 

Jane Coaston: Josie, I think that is such an important message, especially for younger voters. I was thinking about how I feel like I’m weirdly sanguine because I remember being in Ohio in 2004 when John Kerry lost and thinking like Republicans are going to be in charge of everything for the rest of my natural life. What am I going to do? Also, I’m in high school. Also, I hate it. And then two years later, blue wave, two years after that Obama So, like. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Right. 

Jane Coaston: It’s important to remember, obviously we have a ton of structural issues we need to deal with. But it’s worth remembering that there are no eternal victories or eternal losses in politics, and it’s so important for people to remember that. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Yeah, I thought that was a really beautiful speech, honestly, and that this like idea that she was kind of reassuring people that this is a long game. Right? 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Josie Duffy Rice: It’s a really long game. And thinking of this as a generational fight is really key to seeing what’s possible in four years, what’s possible in 40 years. I was very moved by that speech. I thought it was beautiful. 

Jane Coaston: And I think a lot of people at Howard were very moved. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Yeah, absolutely. 

Jane Coaston: What a Day newsletter editor Greg Walters was at Harris’s speech at Howard. He joined us to talk about how Harris’s supporters were taking it all in. Greg, welcome back to What a Day, what did you take away as the main message from her speech? 

Greg Walters: Well, look, I think that she talked about accepting reality but not giving in to despair. She talked about accepting the results of this election, about admitting that the Democrat lost, which frankly, is not necessarily something people were expecting from former President Trump if his side lost. Everybody was bracing for him to reject the election. And she signaled that that is not going to happen from her side of the campaign. She also talked about acknowledging the feeling of gloom and despair that a lot of her supporters are feeling about this loss and about what comes next. But she really urged people not to give in to that feeling and to keep fighting. 

Jane Coaston: Tell me a little bit about the vibe of the crowd that was there on Wednesday. What were some of the things you were hearing from Harris’s supporters in the audience? 

Greg Walters: Well, look, people were bummed. There is no sugarcoating that. There’s no denying that what started as a dance party on Tuesday night took on a kind of somber vibe by Wednesday afternoon, when Harris got up there to give the concession speech. I spoke to people in the crowd who were worried about what it meant for America to issue this kind of rejection to a woman of color. Here are two of the people that I spoke with, Olivia and Nia. 

[clip of Olivia] I feel like this election kind of showed us how the country feels about Black women and feels about women of color. We’re looking at the qualifications of the two candidates. They’re wildly different. One’s extremely qualified. One was literally a convicted felon. So. 

[clip of Nia] That was impeached. 

[clip of Olivia] That’s why I think this space is so important, because this is where we’re celebrated. Period. And I think it’s really important for her to feel loved. That’s what we’re bringing today is love. 

Greg Walters: That said, I would say there were also fragments of hope. And I think she really tried to bring that out in her speech. She talked about not throwing up our hands, but rolling up our sleeves and getting to work on the ideas that she feels this campaign was about. Um. And, you know, I felt that really resonated with the people that I spoke to in the crowd who heard her speak. 

Jane Coaston: Voting data is still coming in, but it seems pretty much across the board. The entire country swung to the right and Harris’s defeat as a victim of that, as is some of the issues going on in the Senate. What are some of the early reasons that we might know why that happened? 

Greg Walters: Ah. Jane, you want me to be a pundit? A pundit? 

Jane Coaston: I know. I know. It’s the worst. 

Greg Walters: Look. I don’t know. And I think there’s going to be a while before the data comes in to really let people make smart, confident takes. But let me say one thing that I think is pretty clear, which is that the economy played a big role here. It was inflation. It was feelings about inflation, feelings about the economy. One AP exit poll that I saw said about nine in ten voters were very or somewhat concerned about the cost of groceries. Eight in ten were concerned about their health care costs or housing costs or the cost of gas. And the thing is that voters who were feeling concerned about the economy generally broke for Trump. One of the things about inflation that I think is important to remember here is that this was a post pandemic, a worldwide post-pandemic phenomenon that really decreased over the years of the Biden administration and came down a lot last year, this year. But it’s one thing for economists to go out there and tell you the rate of inflation has fallen. It’s another thing for voters to look at their grocery store prices and say, hey, these are still high from when inflation really peaked. People were just really still feeling that. And I think you hear that a lot from voters. And that seems to me in my amateur punditry role here, was a big part of what just happened. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. It would not be surprising to me to see the U.S. join the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, all of these countries that punished the incumbent who voters believed was responsible for inflation. But were there any reasons for hope in the speech or from Tuesday night’s results? 

Greg Walters: You know, I think there were and I think that Harris hit on a couple of these in her remarks, um some in sort of allusions, some pretty clear. I mean, she talked about reproductive rights. There were wins for reproductive rights around the country in multiple places. There were the first Black female senators also elected from Maryland and Delaware, in particular in Maryland. You saw a speech that was broadcast to this entire gathering here, this watch party back in the moments when things were still feeling relatively optimistic from newly elected senator from Maryland, Angela Alsobrooks, who gave in a way the kind of victory speech that we never got from Harris. That was a bit of an emotional high point. But, you know, I think it also points to the fact that Democrats aren’t completely without hope. They aren’t completely without some new things to talk about. You know, I think another thing that people are talking about is the defeat of gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson in North Carolina. It turns out you can’t really talk about Nazis on a porn site and still get away with that, at least not in North Carolina gubernatorial politics. 

Jane Coaston: Nope. 

Greg Walters: Call that a bright spot, if you will. 

Jane Coaston: [laugh] Greg, thank you so much for being here. 

Greg Walters: Hey, thank you. 

Jane Coaston: That was What a Day newsletter editor Greg Walters joining us from Howard University. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Thanks, Jane. We also heard from the White House on Wednesday. In a statement, President Biden praised Harris and her bid for the presidency. He said, quote, “Under extraordinary circumstances, she stepped up and led a historic campaign that embodied what’s possible when guided by a strong moral compass and a clear vision for a nation that is more free, more just, and full of more opportunities for all Americans.” But Harris’s loss will threaten much of Biden’s own legacy and the work he’s done over the last four years. So for more on that and what’s next for the Democratic Party, I spoke with Yasmeen Abutaleb. She’s a White House reporter for The Washington Post, and she’s been covering the 2024 election. Yasmeen, thank you for joining us. 

Yasmeen Abutaleb: Thanks for having me. 

Josie Duffy Rice: So what do we know about the reaction inside the White House right now? 

Yasmeen Abutaleb: Unlike 2016, everyone knew this was very much a possibility. Obviously, there is immense disappointment. And I think the Democratic fingerpointing has already begun. Um. And I think there is starting to be a serious reckoning inside the party about you know where the blame lies, where Democrats went wrong this time, whether any of the blame rests with Kamala Harris or whether it’s with Joe Biden. I don’t think there’s been a lot of finger pointing at Harris so far. I think there is a sense that she had just over 100 days to launch this campaign, that she did what she could with that. But that maybe, you know, her being the sitting Vice President, that people wanting a change candidate that they’re not being time for an open primary or for someone to distance themselves from the current administration was just too much to overcome. 

Josie Duffy Rice: The day after the election, you and your colleagues in The Post wrote Trump had outperformed his margins from four years ago in more than nine out of ten counties where at least 90% of the votes had been counted. The conventional wisdom had been that Trump didn’t really have like a lot of room to grow. Right? He had his base. He relied on his base. Did that turn out not to be true? Is it more that he turned out his entire base in a way that Harris didn’t? What are we seeing? 

Yasmeen Abutaleb: Well, I think, you know, there is going to be analysis for days to come. But Trump ran a campaign where he was talking to his base and fixated on his base. But clearly, he turned out more than that, because I think one of the most sort of remarkable findings that we have from these early exit polls, which of course could change, is that he didn’t just run up margins with one or two groups or he didn’t run up margins with his sort of core base. He ran up margins across the board. Um. So you mentioned the data point that he outperformed 2020 in more than nine out of ten counties. That’s huge. And then when you look at the breakdown among different demographic groups or in certain swing states, just some of the top lines are obviously the big story is how much he closed the gap with Latino voters and especially Latino men. But also some of the fears among, I think Black voters didn’t materialize in the ways that people were warning about. But he obviously maintained his strength with men and with white, non-college educated voters. But he also ran up margins with non-college educated voters across all races. And then he also cut into leads in traditional Democratic strongholds, which made it very hard, you know, even though Harris obviously did much better in the suburbs for her to overcome what Trump had done. So he massively closed his gap in cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in Georgia and Wisconsin. He really ran up his margins in rural counties. So Harris’s strength in Atlanta and Milwaukee wasn’t enough to overcome that. So I think clearly he appealed to far beyond his base. And I think the big difference is this time people know very much who Donald Trump is. He, especially at the end of this campaign, did not try to moderate. He fixated on grievances. He’s threatened to use the military against American citizens and who he’s deemed his political enemies. There was a lot of racism and sexism and xenophobia at the end of this campaign. And still, this is what people in large numbers elected. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Mm hmm. Trump is going to be walking into the White House with a majority in the Senate. We don’t know the outcome of the House, but it is not looking great for Democrats right now. What do you expect the main legislative priorities to be in a Trump administration for at least the first two years? 

Yasmeen Abutaleb: It seems their top two legislative priorities are going to be uh this potentially $5 trillion tax cut that’s mostly geared toward the wealthy and then also immigration. And we’re not sure exactly how that will materialize yet. Obviously, one of Trump’s central planks of his campaign was this mass deportation program. We’re going to have to see how that takes shape in Congress, because, you know, they have to get all Republicans to vote for it. And we have to see what happens in the House if they manage to get some vulnerable Democrats who support it, if Democrats do end up taking control or even if they just have a very narrow margin in the House. And I think we’ve seen senators like Lindsey Graham talking about those as the key priorities when they come into office. 

Josie Duffy Rice: And we’re about 75 days out from inauguration right now, and that’s 75 days that Joe Biden remains president. Vice President Harris remains vice president. So what do you expect to see from the White House over the next couple months? 

Yasmeen Abutaleb: Well, I mean, I think for legacy purposes, you know, Biden still has these two wars that the U.S. is not directly involved in in terms of troops on the ground, but has played a huge role in. You have Russia’s invasion of Ukraine um and then you, of course, have Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon and now has expanded to this sort of fight with Iran as well. The challenge is Biden has lost a lot of leverage now. Right. Especially when we’re talking about Israel. Netanyahu is going to wait for Trump to come in. He made very clear he was waiting for a Trump presidency. But I think Biden, for his legacy is going to want to try to make progress and at least trying to wind down the war. It’s unclear if he’ll be successful in that because this is something the administration says it has been trying to do for several months now. Whether they decide to try to exert any sort of leverage on Israel, I think is an open question. Um. And then with Ukraine, I think, you know, there have long been these fears among not just Democrats, but NATO allies of what a Trump presidency would portend for Russia’s war against Ukraine. Whether Trump might try to pressure Ukraine to take a deal that would be more favorable to Russia. He’s talked about that war in sort of mixed ways, but he’s talked about wanting to end it, but not making clear how. That Ukraine might have to accept some sort of defeat to bring it to an end. Um. So I think those are going to be some of the key things that the Biden administration wants to try to make progress on or try to build some sort of bulwark before Trump comes in. 

Josie Duffy Rice: I’m wondering where you think the Democratic Party will go from here? What does it look like in the next few years and what might Harris’s role be in that future party? 

Yasmeen Abutaleb: It’s a great question. I think it’s a little early to tell, especially the question of what role Harris plays. Um. You know, if she tries to mount another bid in 2028, if she tries to be a sort of party standard bearer in another way, um I think that’s all sort of unclear, especially because of the way she was thrust into this role. This was not a typical campaign in any way. I think there is going to be a lot of introspection about the decision for the party to sort of get behind Biden’s wanting to seek a second term, even though I think it was clear fairly early on in polls that a lot of voters thought he was too old. And there was a lot of nervousness among Democrats about him seeking a second term when he was 80. And then I think also, of course, you know, reflecting on the fact that Harris only had three and a half months to launch this campaign. What type of candidate do they need to put forward to defeat the sort of current version of the Republican Party? Are parts of their messaging not appealing to wide swaths of voters and why? I mean, we already saw Bernie Sanders today issue a pretty scathing statement about what he said was Democrats disastrous performance and the reasons why he thought that was. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Mm hmm. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us, Yasmeen. 

Yasmeen Abutaleb: Thank you. 

Josie Duffy Rice: That was my conversation with Yasmeen Abutaleb, White House reporter for The Washington Post. 

Jane Coaston: Thank you, Josie. After the break, we’ll get into the congressional races, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: We’re back. While we’re all figuring out how to handle the result of the presidential race, a bunch of congressional races are still up in the air. We likely won’t know who controls the House for a few days, as votes in California and elsewhere are being counted. But we do know enough to talk about a Republican Senate and where we go from here. One person who is thrilled about Republicans taking back the Senate is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He held a press conference on Wednesday praising the results of the election and what his party plans to do with its power in the chamber. 

[clip of Mitch McConnell] So I think this shifting to a Republican Senate majority helps have control the guardrails to keep people who want to change the rules in order to achieve something they think is worthwhile, is not successful. And so I think the filibuster is very secure. 

Jane Coaston: I wanted to get into what all this means with one of my favorite Washington reporters, Crooked correspondent Todd Zwillich. Todd, welcome back to What a Day. We’re recording this at 7:15 Eastern. But when can we expect results from House races to come in? And what are we seeing so far? 

Todd Zwillich: Well, House races might take a little while. There’s votes being counted all over the place. There’s also, as I understand it, a lot of ballot curing issues. People who voted didn’t sign their ballot correctly. Sometimes it can take weeks to cure or correct those ballots. So in a lot of these races, we might not have results for days or weeks. I don’t know if it’ll be that long until we know control of the house. I mean, right now there are about, as of this recording, 37 House races outstanding. Maybe 20 of those are competitive. Neither side is over the line. Republicans are closer to securing a 218 majority right now. So they’re closer than Democrats. But I’d be surprised if we know today and maybe even surprised if we know for sure by the weekend. 

Jane Coaston: If Republicans do keep control, what kind of majority would they be even looking at? 

Todd Zwillich: A thin one, a thin one, although it could expand a little bit from the four seat majority that they went into the election with, which would be really amazing when you consider that the House Republican majority leading into this election was like historically dysfunctional and inept. It started with those 18 votes for Kevin McCarthy to become speaker. It ended with Kevin McCarthy being ousted as speaker, going through like five or six people before they landed on Mike Johnson. And then he couldn’t pass bills without Democrats. That whole thing. To reward that mess with a broader House majority would be incredible. It would show that people were voting on broader national trends, you know, not thinking about how good a legislators Republicans are when they were voting for Congress. 

Jane Coaston: Let’s get into those broader trends because Republicans did flip the Senate, ousting a bunch of longtime Democratic incumbents like Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana. I feel like we kind of knew Tester was facing an uphill battle to keep his seat. But why do you think Brown ultimately lost? Was he a victim of those national trends? 

Todd Zwillich: Yeah, I think he was. I mean, Sherrod Brown has always had the magic sauce to sort of defy gravity in increasingly conservative Ohio and to gain Trump votes. He was a classic populist Democrat. He was the guy who was writing articles railing against NAFTA before Donald Trump even dreamed of a political career. Sherrod Brown was the O.G. populist, anti-NAFTA trade guy and had definitely defied gravity for Dems for all this time. It’s just possible that his jets ran out. I mean, I think that’s really what happened. Price’s anti-democratic sentiment, all the other things just seem to have swamped him at this point. 

Jane Coaston: What does Republican control of the Senate actually mean for Donald Trump? 

Todd Zwillich: Well, it means a lot. I mean, putting the House aside, Republican control of the Senate means nominations for both executive branch nominees and critically, for judges, district court judges, appellate judges and Supreme Court. There used to be, not too long ago, a 60 vote threshold to approve those types of people in the Senate. That’s gone. It’s 50. They have 52 votes now. That’s enough. Okay. Even if they add two or three more, it won’t matter. A compliant Republican Senate will be able to sail through Donald Trump’s judicial nominees at every level. And executive branch nominees. I mean, in a world where maybe RFK is going to be HHS secretary to ban vaccines or maybe Judge Aileen Cannon from down in Florida might be an attorney general pick. She’s on a short list. Those picks go through very easily. What kind of job do you want Elon Musk to have? Will it even be Senate confirmable? Probably not. But you see what I’m getting, too. And you know, in the first iteration, Trump 1.0, he teamed up with his arch enemy, Mitch McConnell, to pack the courts with conservative judges. They did a phenomenal job at the district appellate and, of course, three Supreme Court justices, two of those justices, conservative justices, not the same two, are retirement age now. Donald Trump is coming into the presidency. I think he’s going to try to convince them to retire while he has a Senate majority also. I’m here to tell you they’ll probably take him up on it. And when he appoints their replacements, those people will be young. So that’s the power of a Senate majority before you even add the House into it. 

Jane Coaston: We’re still waiting to find out whether Jackcy Rosen in Nevada and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania can hold onto their seats. And if Ruben Gallego will win the open seat in Arizona against Kari Lake, who is insane, if Democrats can hold on to some of those seats, could that curb some of Trump’s worst legislative ideas at all? 

Todd Zwillich: Probably not, because it won’t be the difference between 55 and 60, 60 is the magic number in the Senate for legislation. So the filibuster, which Mitch McConnell said he’s not going to get rid of. Democrats would still have the power to block or slow down problematic bad legislation with a filibuster if they stick together. That has nothing to do, though, with a governing trifecta if they take the House. 

Jane Coaston: Something that I’m also interested in is that the tax cuts that Donald Trump was very excited about back in 2017. Those will come up for renewal in 2025. What is that conversation going to look like? 

Todd Zwillich: It’s going to be extremely partisan unless somebody throws some bones in for things like child tax credit. Donald Trump could get some Democratic votes if he threw in some expansions of Medicare or home health care under Medicare into a bill like that. Procedurally, you could absolutely do it. But here’s the thing. A bill like the tax cut won’t need Democratic votes. It won’t need them to overcome the 60 vote threshold for the filibuster. There are congressional procedures. It’s called reconciliation. Google if you’re into it, they can pass that bill with a 50 vote threshold if they do it right for things that have to do with taxes and spending. And I’m here to tell you that if they want to do it without negotiating with Democrats at all, they can do it. 

Jane Coaston: Todd, that did not make me feel better at all, but I do feel better informed. Thank you so much. 

Todd Zwillich: Pleasure. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Crooked correspondent Todd Zwillich. [music break]. Before we go. Today on Assembly Required, Stacey Abrams sat down with Grammy and Pulitzer winning musician Rhiannon Giddens to talk about the powerful connection between politics and art. But more importantly, Stacey gives us the post-election pep talk we all need. I know I certainly needed to hear it. Listen and subscribe to Assembly Required now wherever you get your podcasts. [music break] That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Don’t be afraid to keep screaming, but also, you know, pace yourself and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just scouring every news source for slivers of good news while remembering, hey, we can do this, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and I’m looking forward to seeing you at the collective primal scream. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. [music break]

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