What the Democratic Party Got Wrong

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And now, whilst the world is wondering what a second term under Donald Trump will bring, many are falling back on their memories of Trump, the chaos agent, during his first term. Jonathan Martin has written all about that turbulent time as co-author of “This Will Not Pass.” He also is the political bureau chief there, and he joins Walter Isaacson to discuss the implications of Trump’s re-election and what went wrong for the Democrats.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. Jonathan Martin, welcome back to the show.

JONATHAN MARTIN, POLITICS BUREAU CHIEF AND SENIOR POLITICAL COLUMNIST, POLITICO: Thank you, Walter.

ISAACSON: You’ve been all over the country, mainly in Pennsylvania, past couple weeks, precinct by precinct, looking at things. And what you wrote after this election was that Democrats don’t have a Harris or Biden problem, their challenge is far deeper. They have a voter problem. What do you mean by that?

MARTIN: I’m seeing a rejection from the electorate. It’s akin to a company that’s trying to sell a product and the customers don’t want to buy the product. You know, when Procter & Gamble or Apple or whoever else faces that challenge, well, boy, they go back to the drawing board and try to figure out how to give the customers what they want. And that’s the onus on Democrats now that they’re being rejected by a large swath of this country, the working class, frankly, of America across racial lines. And, Walter, that was the foundation of the Democratic coalition for much of the 20th century, as you know, and to be rejected by these voters who favored a billionaire, you know, who is cozying up with fellow billionaires is humiliating for Democrats, but it does show to them that they do have to find a message that’s more appealing to the working class core of this country. They simply cannot win 270 electoral votes, let alone find 51 Senate seats with suburbanites, there’s just not enough of them out there.

ISAACSON: So, the — you’re talking about the working class. What type of issues have failed the Democrats in trying to appeal to the working class? It used to be the party of the working class.

MARTIN: It was the party of the working man for decades. And I think, look, here’s the coming fight in the Democratic Party. The Bernie Sanders crowd on the left is going to be, say, that we were not sufficiently focused on an economic populist message, the people versus the powerful. We have to get back to our populist roots and drift away from this kind of proto corporatism that’s much more friendly to high income earners. Other folks in the party are going to say, let’s be honest, we’ve lost these people on culture and identity, and we’re talking too much to sound like the Amherst Faculty Club, to borrow a line from our friend James Carville, and we’re using language that’s alienating to these folks who are not as fixated on identity as the elites in America are, and that is the challenge for us. So, that’s the coming debate, Walter, is this — what was the problem, economics or identity, frankly.

ISAACSON: Well, let’s unpack both those and start with the economics. And you mentioned Bernie Sanders. After the election he said, it should come as no great surprise that the Democratic Party which is abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it’s Latino and black workers as well. Should the Democrats have fought against corporate and greed and other things and fought for the working class more?

MARTIN: Well, I think that’s the critique. It’s a blistering critique from Bernie Sanders, who was mostly a good soldier during the course of the campaign, but obviously is now telling us how he really feels. But I think there are clearly areas where Democrats could have done more to go after Trump on class related issues. The one that sticks out in my mind was when he bragged about not paying overtime to the people that worked for him and found other workers to replace them. I mean, you talk about a gift from the gods. Here was somebody who was promising to end taxes on overtime. But at the same time, he never paid overtime to his own workers, not capitalizing on that, I think was in fact a huge mistake. But, Walter —

ISAACSON: But wait, wait. Let me go back to the broader thing, which is a populism.

MARTIN: I hope.

ISAACSON: There have been many Democrats who are able to keep a populist message, whether it was Jimmy Carter or at some point Bill Clinton early on, but what the Democrats have not been able to do, and what I think Bernie Sanders is talking about, is really embrace populism.

MARTIN: Yes. And look, Biden was able to do that at times because he has a sort of labor history and liked talking about unions. And — you know, but it was never really Harris’ forte, right? She comes out of a law enforcement background in the Bay Area. She’s not really a class warrior. It wasn’t the kind of natural language for her to use. So, I just don’t think it was obviously her approach. Also, Walter, Democrats, I think, have been so fixated on driving their numbers in the suburbs and trying to drive a wedge through the old Republican coalition, talking about abortion rights, talking about democracy and Donald Trump’s sort of low character. Those are issues that can galvanize high income earners in the suburbs, but again, Democrats did just fine with a lot of those voters who are now basically Democrats operationally, but there’s just simply not the numbers there, OK? You just look at a place like Michigan or a Pennsylvania, and you can get a hell of a lot of votes out of the suburbs of Philly and Detroit, but there’s a lot of state left where that they don’t have college degrees.

ISAACSON: The other issue you talked about beside the economic one are the cultural one, the populist ones.

MARTIN: Yes.

ISAACSON: Democrats getting painted as the party of transgender, the athletic rights or bathroom rights or whatever. To what extent were those real issues? And to what extent did it cut against the Democrats?

MARTIN: Well, I — in terms of being a real issue, I think it’s not really a real issue. Most high school sports teams aren’t dealing with this. Obviously, there are — there have been a few cases. Oh, it’s just a wedge for the Republicans to use to try to sort of jam Democrats and make them choose between their traditional affinity and support for marginalized constituencies like those in the gay and lesbian community and the broader electorate out there, which is going to be uncomfortable with the idea of boys playing in girls’ sports. And it obviously worked pretty well. You know, Walter, maybe the most memorable act that Trump ran on was that Kamala Harris wants to use taxpayer dollars to pay for trans surgeries for prisoners, which almost sounds like a conservative parody, but it’s actually true. This actually happened in California. And it was a gift from the gods for the Republicans who just put this on repeat in television ads and ran it again and again and again. And this gets to the heart of the Democratic challenges, losing not just workers, Walter, but losing men, losing working class men who, from a cultural standpoint, just have a hard time supporting Democrats.

ISAACSON: Is a problem about losing men partly a sexism against a woman candidate?

MARTIN: Well, there’s no question that it’s difficult for a woman to get elected president in this country. We have two examples of that and we’d be naive to say otherwise. I think it’s even harder when she’s a black woman. So, there’s no question that that was a challenge for Harris, that that obviously was something that she was going to have a hard time getting beyond. But I think that the ground was somehow — in some ways laid for her in ways that were even more difficult for her, because there was a pre-existing structural challenge for Democrats as being this party of the so- called woke. I wrote something in October. You know, the irony for Harris is she’s not a faculty club type. She’s not somebody who’s doing the language police. She would have been perfectly comfortable, I think, sort of taking a different direction and would have had a credibility to do it as a black woman. And it’s sort of puzzling that she wouldn’t have done more of that, sort of taken a stance, sort of sister soldier during the campaign against the excesses of the campus language police. I think she could have done that, and it may have helped.

ISAACSON: You said that, you know, one way she could have gone is run a more populous campaign, but I read your writings. You said she should have run to the center a bit more, moderate.

MARTIN: Yes.

ISAACSON: Explain why — how that would have worked and why she didn’t do it.

MARTIN: Well, look, I think there are ways that you could level populist attacks against Donald Trump on issues of economic fairness, like the overtime issue, but still broadly and totally reassure voters in the political center that you’re going to govern from the center. Look, this is the burden on left of center parties around the Democratic world. It’s something that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama understood intuitively. You constantly have to practice defensive politics in this country, which is center to center right, and by the way, it’s certainly center to center right in the Electoral College version of this country, to reassure people that you’re not a crazy liberal, and that’s just the burden of running and winning a national election as a Democrat. It’s why the last two-term elected Democrats were affected. It was constantly on their minds. How do I reassure the center that I’m not extreme?

ISAACSON: Didn’t she just to do that by campaigning with Liz Cheney and others?

MARTIN: She tried to do it around the edges. But here is my concern about the Liz Cheney stuff. Well, you’re sitting with her and you’re talking about January 6th, democracy, and the guardrails of our constitution. That’s not stuff that’s going to win you new voters, Walter. The people who are voting on January 6th in our constitution are already in your column by now. They’re not thinking about Trump. They’re already for you. You got to give the voters who are not quite yet for you something. And Walter, I was with her and Liz Cheney in Wisconsin. And people stood up from the audience and said, I’m a lifetime Republican voter. Tell me how I could be for you. Please reassure me. And she couldn’t do it.

ISAACSON: You talk about the big shift being man, and this is something that I’ve noticed when I listened to talk radio or I’m online, that there is a broke culture out there, especially among young men, young Hispanic men.

MARTIN: Yes.

ISAACSON: I mean, for the first time in our lifetimes, a Republican won Hispanic men, but it’s a tech bro culture and a finance bro culture, but also a frat bro and working class bro culture that is just flock to the Republican party now.

MARTIN: It has. And I kind of wonder if we would have even called it a bro culture in the 1980s or ’90s. I mean, I don’t think men were appreciably different then. They were still masculine and into sports. And, you know, as our buddy Carville says, they don’t want to have a hamburger watch football game. I mean, I just think that the sort of broader culture has changed somewhat. And we’re now determined to place folks and sort of identity boxes in ways that, you know, in the past, that would have been just sort of, I guess, to borrow a phrase, boys being boys. So, I’m not sure how different it is. But you put your finger on what is different, which is just on mass blocking to support Republicans and just not to be —

ISAACSON: There’s something that Wired magazine — I love the phrase, I’ve been using, calls the manosphere, which is sort of the podcast, you know, a podcast that some of our viewers may not have heard of, but the top ones like Adin Ross. And of course, you have Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson and Lex Fridman. But Trump went on all of those podcasts.

MARTIN: Yes.

ISAACSON: And that’s a — sort of a manosphere online and in the podcast world.

MARTIN: Walter, you are so dead on. It’s the new celebrity culture and it’s taking place off TV, off the movies. I’ll give you an example. The Saturday before the election, I was at Penn State for the Ohio State-Penn State game. At a tailgate with one of the big — the GOP candidates in Pennsylvania. And there was a podcaster there and somebody who has a popular podcast, that’s kind of part sports part of politics. Walter, he was flocked with people asking him for selfies, people coming up the left and right, much more so than the actual politicians in Pennsylvania who were there at the tailgate. The selfies were for him, not for the candidates.

ISAACSON: Would it made a big difference if Biden had not sought re- election two or three years ago?

MARTIN: I do think so. I mean, look, I think the original sin, here you could say politically, is two things. A, it’s Biden putting Harris on the ticket in the summer of 2020, basically ensuring that she’d be the successor. And then, secondly, it’s Biden’s insistence — I guess, the sort of co-original sin, if you will, Biden’s insistence, Walter, on running for re-election as he was going to turn 82 years old. And really, nobody in his orbit or even in the party insisting on otherwise. That to me was the deafening silence. That nobody in his family, his staff, or the senior leaders of the Democratic Party said a word about the wisdom of running an 82-year-old for re-election, who, by the way, looked every bit of 82.

ISAACSON: The larger question is of guardrails, whether it’s guardrails, maybe it’s on the Wall Street Journal editorial board about too high of tariffs, or Liz Cheney, Mitch McConnell, others talking about guardrails that keep them within constitutional limits. Do you think there will be people and who will they be who will try to put guardrails around Trump this time the way that some of the people did early on in the first Trump administration?

MARTIN: Well, that’s one of the biggest differences between this administration and that administration, is that, you know, Trump came in surrounded by staff and cabinet that was mostly people that were, you know in, that old consensus, Walter, that you mentioned, neoliberal, neoconservative. And certainly, on Capitol Hill, but the leaders were Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Well, now that the leaders are going to be likely Mike Johnson and the House, and then, I think likely John Thune in the Senate. People who both come from kind of a pre-Trump tradition, Johnson more conservative, Thune more of a Bush conservative, but still, they’re going to be much more willing to accommodate Trump and Trump-ism, especially after this election, because they’ve seen the support Trump has across the board. And I think they’re going to be even more reluctant to confront him.

ISAACSON: One of the things that struck me most about this election in the past few years is the deep polarization, that, you know, people just can’t talk to people on the other side as much as they used to in an era when it was Obama running against John McCain or Mitt Romney. How deep is this polarization and how’s that going to shape American politics for the next 10 years?

MARTIN: Well, it’s the biggest story of our time. I mean, politics has become less about your preference and more about an extension of your identity. It’s not pistachio or strawberry for dessert, it’s good and evil, it’s black and white, it’s which side are you on? And that is a fundamental shift from what politics was 20 years ago, and I think that has created a lot of the contentiousness in this country. I think Trump is more of a symptom or maybe an accelerant, Walter, than he is the story. But obviously, now, that he’s back in power that is not going away. And I think it’s going to cause huge rifts in this country, both culturally and frankly, in families and communities too. And it’s a challenge. And I think one of the biggest storylines we’re going to see is what do Democrats do? Did they have people to go to the barricades and try to resist Trump like they did in 2016, 2017, or are the results so shocking to them that they try to accommodate some level of Trump-ism? You saw —

ISAACSON: Well, wait, wait. You answered your own question.

MARTIN: Oh, I mean, look, I think that the majority of them will go to the barricades and try to resist. I do.

ISAACSON: Is this a major political realignment, a tectonic shift we’ve seen, talking about everything from working class to gender issues and other things, or is this — that will reshape American politics just the way the new deal did, or is this something temporary?

MARTIN: Oh, I think it’s temporary. I mean, look, I think we’re in a period of exceedingly close elections in which the parties trade back power in a divided country that’s cleaved along those lines of class, gender, and region that we’ve been talking about so much. I spoke to a historian last week at the Smithsonian about this. This does reflect the kind of post-Civil War period. I think technological change, high immigration, and a really closely divided country in which politics was a growth of identity and sort of who you were that more than it was a preference. And because the country is so divided, I think we’re going to have closely fought elections and quite frankly, trade power back and forth in Congress, Walter, because when one party overreaches or missteps, the other party will take advantage of that and we’ll go on and on and on I think in that same way for some time to come.

ISAACSON: Jonathan Martin, thank you so much for joining us.

MARTIN: Thank you, Walter.