Jack Schlossberg on the Lessons We Can Take Away From This Election

0:28This is The Run Through. Across the country, galvanizing the youth vote. Meeting people in the Democratic Party. Yeah. He's really been out there for us. Very boots on the ground. Very boots on the ground, yeah. And talking to a lot of young voters, too, which we're going to hear about. Yeah, which I was interested to hear about. Yeah. So here is our Wednesday morning conversation with Jack. Jack, tell us about your night last night, morning this morning. I had a good time. I was by myself. I tried to watch with my sisters and dad, but I lasted about five minutes and went home. Right. But at that point, I was still, like, excited, and I didn't know what was going on.

1:04Even though— What did you eat? Steak. Steak. I did. Yeah. But that's just because I got so much steak earlier this week. I ordered steak for two, for one. Okay. And then I just kept eating it. I think leftover steak. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with it. Yeah. And, yeah, I've made mayonnaise kind of my thing this year, and I did put mayonnaise on it. So for everybody out there keeping track. God, I love mayonnaise. I love it. Yeah, you do, actually. My daughter and I love mayonnaise. Oh, yeah. Taylor does olive oil and mayonnaise together. No, no, no. Smart. No, what do you do when you combine?

1:35No, I do pesto and mayonnaise. Oh, pesto and mayonnaise together. I'm just like two oils. Right. No big deal. Two oils is your whole thing. Right. I think it's a lot. And these are healthy oils. Exactly. These are healthy oils. Yeah. What time did you go to bed and what was happening when you went to bed? It did not go to bed. Oh, wow. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I just – I find it fascinating. I didn't – I don't – I'm not sad. I mean I'm disappointed my person that I voted for didn't win. And that you worked, frankly, really hard for. Yeah, and I really believed and still do in the Democratic Party.

2:08I have a unique perspective on that. I think that a lot of people my age maybe don't about like being really proud to be a Democrat. And I think that this election is very interestingly showing that that doesn't really resonate amongst people my age and that Democrats have some work to do there. So I feel like maybe it didn't work out, but like you don't always win. And it often goes back and forth. And it's hardly a surprise. I mean, I think she ran a great campaign under the circumstances, but it wasn't like this was like everybody's idea of a perfect plan from the beginning. Yeah, I mean, it's like amazes me that anybody is a Democrat.

2:48And so the fact that there are millions of them to me is still inspiring. I feel like you are very much one of the few people I know who's been with a lot of young people across the country over the last two months. So I am curious, like, what you found and what you encountered with people. Like, trying to think of a positive lining this morning, I was like, I traveled to, like, almost all the swing states, tons of events. I met thousands of, frankly, young women, not many young men, but really so many young women, so excited, so enthusiastic, so engaged. like making friendship bracelets, completely committed, doing on-the-ground work.

3:26And I think that if Kamala Harris hadn't been the nominee and President Biden hadn't graciously stepped down, that none of those people would have gotten involved in this election. And so things could be way more bleak. And instead, even though we didn't win, we did get a lot of people who wouldn't have otherwise been excited about it involved. It was a galvanizing campaign. Yeah, totally. There was electricity that wouldn't have been there otherwise. I think that's right. And I think back to those early first rallies Vice President Harris did and the convention. And it is hard not to feel a little bit of a disconnect between the results, which we should say, right?

4:06Yes. Where are we right now as of this morning? Donald Trump has won the electoral college. He's going to have a unified government most likely. The House is still out there, right? But it doesn't look good. It doesn't look good. It looks great for the Republican Party. And like notably, he won the popular vote, which no Republican has done since George W. Bush. So that's sort of where we are. And what I was saying is like it's sort of hard for me to sort through the contradiction between that energy from the convention and those early rallies and sort of where we're sitting this morning with what seems to be a quite decisive lopsided result.

4:43How do you square those images in your head? I think like both things can be true. I think people are – were really excited. Yeah. And I think that the economy is the most important thing in every election. Yeah. And so people can be really, really excited about a lot of different things. But if you're going up against the ultimate headwind of inflation, then it's going to be really, really tough to win for anybody at any time. And I think that Democrats, we didn't do a great job selling the economic record over the last four years. And so all of a sudden it was up to her to do that in 100 days.

5:16It's like not a criticism. I think they ran a great campaign. But clearly, the electorate voted on the economy this time. And for a very clear message from Trump of like lower taxes and anti-immigration. Seal the border. I mean, that's what he was saying is seal the border. Yeah. Those aren't as exciting issues as maybe what we latched onto of democracy, freedom, reproductive rights, like economic opportunity. Those are maybe more vague. And maybe they didn't translate as well communications-wise. But I still think there's a lot of value in those messages, but Democrats have to tweak it. Gosh, he seemed to do better kind of everywhere.

5:55I mean, one of the thoughts that I've been having looking at, the New York Times has these little maps this morning where they show these little arrows, you know, that are pointing. Red arrows show that, you know, he outperformed where he did in 2020. And blue arrows show that he, you know, did the opposite. And it's just like a sea of red arrows. It's very dramatic, you know. I wondered if we've oversold this idea that we're all living in these bubbles. I actually wonder if there's more diversity of political opinion among us and where we live. Do you have any sense of that? I mean you've traveled around more than I have.

6:27Trevor Burrus I feel like he built a really diverse, broad coalition. Kamala Harris did pretty well. She performed almost as well as with white voters but did not as well with non-white voters. and so like Hispanic men I think voted for Trump in large numbers and young men as well. The lesson that I hope Democrats don't learn here is that we focus too much on social media and all this like reproductive rights and stuff and like that didn't work and it's got to be like economics all the way. I don't think that that's why Trump won. I think that Trump won because he's a really amazing omnipresent media figure and there's much more media of him out there and we didn't do a good job of making a ton of media until the very end.

7:09But I really hope that people don't think like, oh, we like, Brad Summer was not like fluff or hype that didn't pan out. I feel like my lesson from it was, no, that was a vein of energy that the Democrats tapped into and harnessed. But I think that it really did make a big difference for people.

7:35and we'll be back after the break

7:47right now in movies and the opera even in pop music divinely inspired women are everywhere This week on Critics at Large, we make our case. Saints are having a moment. Look, I can spout off any number of cliches, but they're all true. The world is moving faster and faster. Materialism is now reaching every single corner of the globe. It's very hard to say no and to say stop and to say I will do without. And I think that explains some of the modern cultural appeal. I'm Vincent Cunningham. Join me and my co-hosts on Critics at Large from The New Yorker. Find us every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

8:37You spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania. What was your feeling on the ground in person? Where were you? I was in Philadelphia. We went to Bucks County and places around Philadelphia. My broad impression of the whole time on the road was that the message from Democrats was resonating really well with a very specific person and that Trump had become something other than what I thought of him as since he left office last time. And now he's a mainstream kind of like down the middle kind of option. Yeah. Which I didn't see coming. That's interesting. And I think kind of happened pretty fast. And I think as much as we did really well with the Brad stuff at the end, I think there's a lot more conservative media, especially social media, like reinforcing his image as a masculine hero.

9:31Which I think did a lot to make that more mainstream. My whole comment about how there's more diversity among us than we think, I want to be clear that I think that the media world is extremely bubbled. Even if your neighbor is a Trump voter and you didn't know that, you and your neighbor are not looking at the same things online anymore. And I think that's a really profound change. And so I do think that if you look at your media appetite and you think about the election, you think that, you know, there's a whole side of things that you just never got. Like this idea that Trump is down the middle.

10:04I mean, you know, even just reading The New York Times the last few weeks, it seems like Trump was deranged and about to collapse on stage, you know. Well, let me tell you, my mother is a faithful New York Post reader and anytime I'm over there, I'm astounded at how mainstream and how normalizing it is of Trump. What is your thinking about a media appetite? Like what is the way to be like an informed person now? Like do you need to look at, you know, Fox News to educate yourself if you don't, you know, or vice versa? Do you need to hang on at MSNBC if you're a Republican? Like what's the responsible way forward?

10:42I don't know that I'm the archetype of a responsible media consumer. But I will say that a story from this election that is undoubtedly true and going to shape politics going forward, which is irrespective of the outcome, is that like is how social media is now central to political campaigns. Yeah. And I saw that firsthand. Whenever we would go to a governor in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Pennsylvania, senators too, they all have these little production companies now set up. Not really production companies, but like two 25-year-olds and a 29-year-old, and they just crank out videos. And as we saw with Vice President Harris, they don't do traditional media as much anymore.

11:26Right. Or they do podcast kind of thing. Or like Joe Rogan. Right. Which is not how it used to be. Like a three-hour interview, can you imagine like anyone, any candidate from any other race in the past being like, yeah, I'll sit down for three hours and you can ask me anything you want? Like that would never have happened. Yeah. So I don't know where traditional media goes from here. No one that I know watches cable news. Like I'm the only person I know who like watches all that stuff. It's just because I like it. But nobody else does that. So you have to make videos, which is like terrifying.

11:55Yeah. But you literally have to make social media videos or else they'll be watching something else. And anyone can make those videos and say whatever they want. Abortion was a major issue going into this election. It was very much top of ballot for a lot of people. How did abortion do on the ballot across the country? Reproductive rights were extremely motivating during the midterm elections. Yeah. But during the presidential election, it seemed to be way less of a factor in people's voting preferences. So that's a big surprise, actually. The Harris campaign, to their credit, they said, okay, like democracy and reproductive rights are the things that we're going to like hammer.

12:35But I think obviously people resonate, a different message resonated this time. I mean, I think the Florida one, which was a big victory for DeSantis, is the headline for me. I guess people really feel differently about that, like, than the culture I'm a part of does. Like a lot of the country, I guess, like, just feels really differently about that issue. Which is a surprise. Yeah, interesting either way. And I think Florida is really a changed state, too. I mean, think back to George W. Bush, for instance, when Florida was like, that was the hanging Chad election, right? Exactly. And it was like Florida was on a knife's edge.

13:10Yeah, right. No one thinks Florida's on a knife's edge anymore. Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford, senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co-host of Little Gold Men. Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood. There's a hundred wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated. Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

13:49What were a few bright spots for Democrats? Yeah, what were the bright spots for you, for Democrats? I mean, I think about North Carolina. We have a new governor in North Carolina. Yes. Tammy Baldwin, Senator Tammy Baldwin, held onto her seat in Wisconsin. That's great. I'm very excited about that. Hopefully, Laura Gillen in New York, in Nassau County, will win. Josh Stein, yeah. In North Carolina, Josh Stein beat Mark Robinson. I mean, probably the most flawed governor candidate in the election. But nonetheless, yes, good for Josh Stein. Sarah McBride, first transgender rep in U.S. history, won in Delaware.

14:25I'm curious. I mean, I think those are sort of the bright spots. I think there aren't a ton of bright spots. Maybe more will come clear in the days that follow for Democrats. But, you know, I think when I look ahead, I'm sort of curious about who are, you know, who is this going to make space for in the Democratic Party? And you, you know, travel widely within the Democratic Party. And I wonder if there are any people that have really impressed you and that you'll be paying attention to in the years to come. I think that is maybe the brightest spot is that their democratic party has tons of super compelling, inspiring senators and governors from across the country.

15:02Yeah, it does. Governor Shapiro, Pennsylvania, Governor Whitmer, Michigan, Governor Newsom, California. I mean, there's a lot of very exciting people. I think that hidden behind all of this is like a changing of the guard in a major way. Like the old guard kind of held on a pretty long time. Yeah. That's a good point. Amazing. Lee did amazing. But like Speaker Pelosi is no longer going to be running the party. President Biden won't be either. That's right. And the party needs to clearly change what it's focusing on at the same time. That'll be fascinating to watch. And as you say, they're compelling people to start pushing that message.

15:39I mean, I think also Maryland Governor Wes Moore is worth mentioning. Yeah, exactly. He's a superstar. Exactly, yeah. To spend 10 minutes with him is to feel like, oh, okay, Democratic Party's got some interesting people in it, right? The next person has got to be really good on social media. I'm convinced of this. That's now paramount to any campaign. It's like you have such an advantage if the candidate is like a content machine. Totally. If not, then you're like struggling to do this thing that you have to do every day. What did you make of the kind of word salad criticism of her? The fact that she wasn't able to kind of marshal herself rhetorically to speak in a way that was clear and direct.

16:20That was a criticism. I'm not saying that's true. I'm saying that was a criticism that was leveled at her. And I wonder what you make of that. I think like without being critical of her, because I think she did an outstanding job in a lot of ways, I think like it speaks to another problem that Democrats have, which is articulating a message. And I feel like maybe that's like a metaphor for the struggle of like she's inheriting a presidency and there's all these different parts of the party that like kind of didn't like just came together to stop Trump in 2020, but didn't really figure it out. And, and there's like Israel and Gaza, there's like all of these kind of like factions that have held tight against Trump.

17:01But maybe when you're now going to articulate like what we all believe in, I can imagine that that's like, well, I'm like tied because I can't talk about this or that. Like no one could do that. Well, I also think like part of like running a successful presidential campaign is getting to like win a primary and then like adapt, figure it out as you go. That's like the only and best training to run a successful campaign. And they didn't get to do that. And they didn't get to like test anything or like have the legitimacy of bouncing off each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that was also like everyone was kind of guessing like, okay, I think it's reproductive rights and democracy, you know?

17:39But then obviously we found out that like that people were more like economy. And the excitement again in those early weeks after President Biden dropped out, it was so overwhelming that there was no one across the political spectrum saying, you know, this is not the way this should be going down. Totally. And I feel like that is the thing that we can all like latch on to and remember as not a failure, but it's like, it could have been way worse. Yeah. And like we did do something to try to fix it and nominate a woman of color to be the president of the United States. I feel like we're forgetting that that's like a huge deal.

18:17Do we think that Vice President Harris's proximity to Biden affected? Well, there's a criticism that she wasn't able to break sufficiently with him. Right. I mean, for her to say, yeah, actually, this has been a failure of an administration, that's not an argument she could evade. Yeah. As you've noted, I'm having a little bit of difficulty articulating myself this morning. And I'm wondering, what would you say to people who are sort of struggling this week and getting through it? I mean, we had some, I thought, nice pieces that – Chloe Shalmer wrote a nice piece about how to talk to your kids about the election.

18:50I really struggled this morning. I was sort of being very quick and sort of sharp with my four-year-old. And how do you guys plan to speak to people? What is – if people are listening and they're wondering sort of what's our next step? I feel like – I mean, there's midterms in two years. Trump is a one-term president. Like this is, even if she had won, none of this, we would still have to keep, like that wouldn't have been over, it wouldn't have been over either. We would have had to keep working really hard. And that's the unfortunate but fun thing about politics is that like, it's a pain in the ass and you're never, it's never done.

19:25And I think Democrats lost for like a really long time. My parents always say that. But then I grew up with like Bill Clinton and Obama. So it seemed like we could win. But I think there was like a really long time of Democrats not winning. I don't think that's the future. But I think that these things happen. And it's like around the world, like we're fighting this thing that's happening around the world. Incumbent governments are getting displaced because of inflation. Yeah. I mean I would say I was on a – I got my kids out the door this morning too. My kids are a little older than Chloe's, 12 and 10.

19:58What do you say to them? They really get it. I just said very – I was very straightforward. I was like, Trump won. The first time I saw them, William, my 10-year-old, comes down at like 530. It's so early. And so, you know, I'm unloading the dishwasher. And I was like, hey, how'd you sleep? Trump won, you know. And then I was like, it's totally going to be fine. I just think that that feels like the message that I want to send as a parent, which is like, you know, we got you. Life goes on, you know. And my daughter, who's 12 in seventh grade, I mean, her group chat was already like blowing up with people being like, oh, my God, life is over.

20:31So she's more sophisticated in the way that we talk about things like politics. But my wife and I have said to her, no matter what happens, everything's going to be okay. For you. Yes. And I want to be thoughtful about that. It is a choice that we make to message normalcy, even if you're not feeling it inside, because I think that's sort of – this has really become Parenting 101. Anyway, the thing I wanted to say was after I got my kids off to school, I took the subway into work. And the G train and the A train were so crowded. There were so many people. And the normalcy of that, everyone being on the subway together and just heading in and your earbuds in and doing like whatever, that to me felt quite sustaining.

21:16So I thought to myself, the days and weeks to come, if I want to feel normal, what I'm going to do is like go about my daily life with the rest of the city. What are you planning to do in the days and weeks to come? Well, I started reading poetry last night, which is – What did you read? Which shows you my mental state. Yeah, okay. I Googled super tragic poems, famous. And I found some good Robert Frost poems that I like. I remember liking. Yeah. And like some – yeah, some like Civil War, Follow the Light Brigade, thinking about how bad people had in the past, what it could be like, how lucky we are.

21:51I also think like maybe – we've tried being outraged by Trump at everything he does. Maybe this is the next phase of being like not reacting like that, like what you're saying. Trying to take it more in stride and like respond more effectively. Maybe that's – Practically and positively. You know, I would love to see that. And more poetry. That's good too. Yeah, exactly. More poetry is actually a very good note. I support that. What are your poetry search terms? Actually, let's save that for another pod. It's like all Christina Rossetti. Dirty limerick. Okay, well, Jack, thank you so much. I know it was a tough ask after coming in and being up all night.

22:33Thank you, guys. It's good to collect your thoughts after something like this. Thank you.

22:48The Run-Through is produced by Chelsea Daniel, Alex De Palma, and Joanna Solitarov. It's engineered by Jake Loomis and James Yost. It is mixed by Mike Kutchman. Stephanie Karaoke is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's head of global audio.

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