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Why Trump won, with Melissa Chen
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Donald Trump will be the 47th President of the United States. He will be the second President in history to be elected for non-consecutive terms, after Grover Cleveland. Whether you like him or not, Trump has confirmed his position as the most remarkable American political figure of the 21st century.
To discuss what we’ve just seen, and what is to come, Will is joined by writer and commentator, Melissa Chen.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Promotion
00:00:19
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will, a safe space for dangerous conversations. I'm Will Kingston. If for some reason you're not already following the show, you can find us everywhere from Spotify to Apple Podcasts to YouTube. If you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five-star review. If you don't like what you hear here, forget I said anything.
Trump's Historic Win Announced
00:00:40
Speaker
Donald Trump is the 47th President of the United States. He is the second president in history to be elected for non-consecutive terms after Grover Cleveland. We are recording this the day after the election at 4pm in the UK and 11am in New York. The full picture still isn't clear, but we know that Trump has won. We know that it it wasn't just decisive, it could potentially be a landslide. We know most of the mainstream media didn't see the results, or at least the decisiveness of the result coming once again. And we know that, whether you like him or not, Donald Trump has confirmed his position as the most remarkable American political figure of the 21st century.
Melissa Chen Joins the Discussion
00:01:24
Speaker
To discuss what we've just seen and what is to come, I am delighted to be joined by writer and commentator, Melissa Chen. Melissa, welcome to Fire at Will. Hi, Will. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to have you on. You're in New York at the moment. I'll start by asking, have you had any sleep
00:01:41
Speaker
i had some most people that we were with last night and there was a big media gathering with the free press reason journalists think tank ah people who work at think tanks that kind of type and you know it was very clear by nine o'clock that a lot of the i would say fifty percent of the room it kind of cleared out. And if you kind of like asked around, you realize like it was the people who were, who had personally voted right, that stayed on
Reactions to Trump's Victory
00:02:08
Speaker
after nine. And then the people that kind any sleep? of saw where things were going, Kamala fans, they, they left by that time. And by midnight, it still wasn't clear who who won yet. Trump didn't come on and give his speech till closer to almost 2am New York time, at least. So by the time most people actually went to bed, it was probably 3. What are your immediate reflections on what we've just seen? This is kind of surprising. um I think I expected Trump to win the electoral college. At least that's what early data was showing. But I personally did not expect him to have such a sweeping victory across all different, the Republicans at least, to get the Senate, to also get the popular vote. I think he is that's something that he didn't get in 2016. It looks like the popular vote's 15 million at least, the gap, as you said as you mentioned in your intro, there's still a lot of uncertainty in some states and it remains to be seen whether the House actually goes to the Republicans at this point. But by i mean by all measures, this looks like one of the greatest comebacks in political history. I can't remember a time when a sitting president actually loses an election, comes back and has, and and in such a resounding way, I think it's only happened once in history, as you alluded to, but but to do it this way is not only resounding victory for for the Republicans, but what a repudiation.
Analysis of Election Outcome
00:03:40
Speaker
If if you're a Democrat, you need to really do a lot of soul searching today. Well, that raises an interesting question. Did Donald Trump win this election or did Kamala Harris lose it? I think, I mean, it's so it's not just Kamala, right? This is Kamala and Joe and the entire Democratic establishment as well. For such a comprehensive, I think there's two ways to look at it. The the result is so comprehensive that it sure looks like it's a repudiation, not just of of you know the the media and the the democratic establishment and their policies. Their policies have been very unpopular and so unpopular that you saw Kamala running to the right of many policies that her party had pushed for over the last four years. I mean, immigration, for example, she was the border czar. And immigration had become, you know, the Overton window, in at least in the United States, has shifted so far right. People were very concerned about what was happening on on the southern border. And the Democrats, for a long time, even discussion of immigration was kind of coded as untouchable or or racist in some way. it They all tracked to the right during the run-up to the election. And so you see the policies kind of move that way. The homeless and the crime issue was suddenly dealt with with a lot of gusto in an election year. um So there seems to be some awareness that the policies that they've pushed, very radical ones, like defund the police that we saw in 2021, 2022, were very, very unpopular. And people had enough of these kind of DEI policies as well as companies started rolling them back, um even though they were still enshrined and at some at some level in federal law. Universities started also rolling back their DEI programs and cutting their bureaucracies. So you saw this Overton window shift. I think the Dems have lost it, but have have lost the election in in a way. But the Republicans, on the other hand, if if you think about what it took for Trump to actually beat Kamala this way, it took two assassinations. It took all this coalition building that he's done. His Trump team is now very broad. You have ah RFK Jr. joining Trump on the ticket, J.D. Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and just a whole host of others that weren't in the solid Republican kind of embrace before.
Impact of Media and Memes
00:06:11
Speaker
And Elon Musk, Joe Rogan endorsed him in the last 24 hours before voting day. I mean, all of that is what, all of that kind of led to this moment where it's just been a red ah red wave. We'll get into more deeply the postmortem for the Democrats and the Republicans separately in a moment. But just before we do, it's interesting how you emphasize policy in your response there, because at the outset of this election campaign, a lot of people were saying that this was the vibes election, that this was really going to be about the personalities of, well, initially Biden and then Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a referendum on those two people. And Kamala Harris effectively didn't release any policy throughout the campaign. Is what you're suggesting that policy still matters to American voters? Is this or is this something that we can take away from this result, do you think? therere I saw some exit polling that the BBC had published and it looked like Americans really cared. There were two things that mattered to them, two topics. One of them was democracy. I don't think they meant it in the same way that when the Dems said that democracy is on the ballot. The other issue that that voters cared a lot about was the economy. So it does look like bread and butter issues actually won over the day. I don't think we can discount memes. And the reason I say that is because the this is, in in a way, or also repudiation of the news media. Most of the people were getting their news now on social media, especially the younger generation. And if you you know look, I think of this election as a ah kind of um meme warfare in a way. We saw a lot of topics that trended and were memed into existence, even in the last week that had been you know very frenzied push for all these things, that America was was talking about a squirrel because of the federal authority, not federal, actually New York state authorities had euthanized a very beloved influencer squirrel. And that squirrel became a meme on the internet. And Elon was pushing a lot of this and very influential ah podcasters, even like Joe Rogan. And then on the other side, you also have you know Kamala and her camp had pretty much all of Hollywood. She had Taylor Swift. She had Oprah. Celebrities, we saw the Marvel ah actors who were in The Avengers, I think, came out to do an ad for her. And you the the two sides have this huge contrast. And so the media play here was, you know that that in in a way, the traditional way of of covering the elections, right? It was more important that Kamala get on Joe Rogan than it was for Kamala to do, say, 60 minutes on CBS. And this is a huge paradigm shift. And I think we're not putting this genie back in the bottle. And as you as you um you know play this out, Elon had this tweet that I think was very striking. He tweeted last night after it was very clear that Trump was winning. He said, you are the media now. And he posted that just one sentence on Twitter. And obviously what that means is that you create the memes. You are the media. You are the influencer. The traditional legacy media kind of doesn't matter anymore. And as long as that holds true, then what we have is you know the possibility to influence in terms of vibes and memes. So i don't I don't think that I can easily discount that. But given what voters were saying matters to them, ah the top you know five topics that matter to them. It looks like the economy really mattered a lot and people were suffering. That Rogan Harris interview that almost was, was such a fascinating insight into the changing nature of power in the world today in that Rogan offered her a slot. Her team came back and said, yep, but we'll do it for an hour and you have to come to us. And Rogan basically said, bugger off. No, you can come to me and you'll do it for three hours or nothing at all. And nothing and nothing at all happened. And what an interesting reflection of of the world today that effectively a podcaster had more relatively power in that relationship than the vice president of the United States. No, exactly.
Kamala Harris's Political Challenges
00:10:44
Speaker
i I don't ever recall a time when Rogan actually flew to anybody to do an interview. It's very clear what the deal is. It's it's an honor. Firstly, it's really hard to get on the Joe Rogan experience. You have to really know somebody or have a really good booker to get you through. Joe is the one that you know decides ultimately. And I know so many people, influential in influential people that are clamoring to get on his show and and and are unable to. So when Joe offers you something, you take it. And it's knowing what kind of audience he has, and especially for Kamala. At that point, they already knew they were doing very badly with male voters. And it was across the board. We know that Gen Z voters were, especially for the the gender divide, men were preferring Trump 60% to 40%. Women were favoring Kamala 70% to 30%. So at that point, the campaign should have known how important it was to actually appeal to not just men, but like younger younger boys as well. And that's precisely the demographic that Joe Rogan actually appeals to. But you can also probably read more into this. Perhaps Kamala knew that the format actually doesn't really favor her strengths at all. Kamala, if she has to do an interview, needs something that
00:12:07
Speaker
ah constrain that's very canned she's unable to really freeheel and and talk conversationally and you know it's she's kind of ah ah oldschool politician in that sense who's just used to traditional media. And she's suffered whenever she's had to answer our questions at length, you know very kind of vapid sentence and strung together. And she seems to just kind of been put in a very difficult position herself. She was anointed by her party and she was had to defend why her and and the you know heard the rest of the the people in the DNC and the media actually kind of gaslit the entire nation about the exact state of Joe Biden's cognitive status. So she she didn't have it easy. And imagine her going on Joe Rogan. i mean I've always said in these long, meandering conversations where you have three hours to talk to the host, it's an interesting format because you you can actually hide who you are. it It comes out because people read so much more. It's not just you know tight tightly produced segments with artificial lighting and everything. it's it's You have to be very relaxed and you're just going off with with somebody in conversation. and and In a way, it's so it's a window to your soul. You're too modest, but of course, you've had a wonderful conversation with with Joe. I strongly recommend anyone goes and and has a listen to that. Let's dig a bit deeper on the Democrats and their failure before we turn to the Republicans. You've mentioned Harris. I think you were being diplomatic there. In my opinion, she is the most limited politician that I've seen in American politics, arguably, in my lifetime. What do you think it says about the American political system today that someone with such evident limitations can get to the position of being, well, close to the presidency? Kamala, if she had been subjected to a proper primary process, probably wouldn't have made it through the field. And it's not only probable, we that actually did happen in 2020. We know that. When Kamala ran in a very crowded democratic field, you had you know she was challenged by Pete Buttigieg,
Democratic Strategy Critique
00:14:50
Speaker
Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Biden, and she couldn't emerge at all from that. she she actually had to I think she had to leave before almost after long before the the primary kind of kicked into motion. So she was not popular among her own party. And in this case, what happened with this, the great switcheroo, all of a sudden, about after Trump was almost assassinated, the Democrats had to pull this card where they just did a swap out.
00:15:25
Speaker
The American public never got to weigh in. She was never subject to forces in which she could be tested. And I think that that is one of the major reasons why the Democrats have suffered such a resounding loss. Her limitations were just kind of washed over. And instead, what you had was the Hollywood class kind of trying to launder her image. I remember the moment she was declared somehow anointed or coronated, if you will, as the the candidate that no one actually you know really wanted, it seemed. You had pop stars like Charlie XCX, who's a British pop star. um I didn't even know who she was, but all of a sudden, there was this phrase that was just trending. Kamala is brat. And I felt really, really old, not knowing what that was. And and you know having to read explainers. Who is Charlie XCX and why is Kamala's font all green now? And you saw this very strange kind of astroturf push to relaunder her image on social media, in the press, on TikTok. There were these dancing memes where her vapid statements were kind of turned into short videos that actually made her look kind of cool. Like that, why not? I i referenced earlier, you know, her, these statements that platitudes that she makes that almost, if if you kind of imagine just examined it for just, you know, more than 20 seconds would realize the two catchphrases that she was known for. I can imagine what can be unburdened by what has been. And did you think you fell out from a coconut tree? Those two things are in diametrical opposition. One of them is about context. Did you think that you just fell out from from a coconut tree? No, you have obligations to a community or or social ties that you didn't choose. And then the other one is just, you have no obligations at all because can you imagine what the future is unburdened by what has been or what came before you? And it's like, did we not critically question you know all these sloganeerings that seem to have been just shoved down America's throats? It was quite alarming to me when I saw you know this play out in terms of social media memes. And I think despite all the best efforts, America really saw through it. Image laundering is such a great term for what we saw. I agree. And this is also where your story about the failure of the media comes into this, because if the media actually did their job and held her to account account perhaps earlier, A, she would have, I think, actually got better with more scrutiny on her. But B, we would have been able to see kind of more quickly that this is someone who probably wasn't up to the up to the task. You mentioned the switcheroo. With the benefit of hindsight, was it still the right decision to punt but Biden when they did? It looks like it's not. And the reason I say that is because if you look at the county level in infant data from this election, Biden actually outperformed Kamala in every county. There was not a single one, in other words, that she could beat Biden and but from this election compared to the last one. And the fact that she's losing to Trump, again, by 15 million votes in the popular vote, what happened to that 15? Because Biden won it four years ago. 15 million people is a lot to sit out of an election. And it's clear to me that Biden, I mean, who knows? At this state, maybe the memes would have just gone um you know more into overdrive, kind of emphasizing his cognitive decline. we're not where we We can only know how Kamala measures against 2020 Biden. We don't know how she measures up against 2020 for Biden. probably But it looks like it's not good if you compare head-to-head data. Yeah, that data point around the counties and for people following at home, there are 1,334 counties in the United States. So for not a single county to have improved under Harris compared to Biden in 2020 is quite remarkable. Before we look at the Republicans, the one thing I'm also keen to think about on the Democratic side is the threat to democracy line, which under Biden particularly, and then still to a great degree under Harris, was the center point of their attack line against Trump. It obviously didn't resonate, or at least enough. Why not? I think Americans, for the most part, actually didn't really care about January 6th. It was a serious ah problem. I think that the entire thing was a stain on American history. But by and large, Americans did not seem to really care about Jan 6. In fact, I think they, especially Republicans, think that the Democrats kind of overplayed their hands going after the protesters with you know during throwing the the law book at them in a way that seemed hypocritical given that the same people that were protesting at the Portland courthouse and and throwing Molotov cocktails into a federal building during the BLM riots earlier, just weren't subject to the same level of legal scrutiny and and legal pushback. So it looks like Americans, by and large, discounted January 6. And then the other issue for the Democrats is that while they were using this line, that democracy is on the ballot, that we need to do everything we can to save democracy, over the last four years, they have pursued a series of of policies or strategies that that were undermining democracy. That includes the lawfare that they've employed against Donald Trump. The New York case where you had a very activist DA, Elvin Bragg, go after Trump for campaign finance kind of violations. in in you know There was a ah famous quote, I think it was either Stalin or or Lenin, I can't remember, said, find me the man and I'll find you the crime. And that is that is how Americans viewed what happened to Donald Trump. In fact, to his popularity ah among Black Americans seemed to have gone up after he was a convicted felon. So you had all these machinations over the years, the the Russian collusion ho know, where you had all these intelligence officials signing off and promoting. And and and it wasn't just the the political class, but it was also the media that went after Trump for years, undermining the results of 2016. And while they didn't undermine it in the same way that Trump's rhetoric did in the 2020 elections, they undermined it in a way that was consistent over the last four years. And anyone watching MSNBC, if you have if you have friends that just watch mainstream media, still actually till today believe that he was some sort of a Russian asset, that Russia helped to elect him in 2016. In other words, that he never won fair and square.
Populism's Rise in Politics
00:22:49
Speaker
And so all these tactics, including the removal of Trump from ballots in two states, just struck people as, wait a minute, there is something wrong with this narrative about trying to safeguard democracy, because none of that seemed democratic at all, including the idea that, you know, Democrats had been rejecting this idea of requiring voter ID as well, securing the elections. And so it just did not, America america was not convinced by that. This goes to perhaps the fundamental question I still grapple with. And that is most people in the center or on the center right could see that the threat to democracy line was not resonating with people. People, you know, Trump supporters or even many moderate sensible people just did not see him in that way. They did not perceive January 6th to be the type of threat that it was portrayed as. They didn't see him as Hitler. They didn't see him as a fascist. And yet there are so many people in the elite left that did view him that way and couldn't get their head around a different way of looking at things. ah shared I shared on twitter Twitter a tweet just before, and there was millions of tweets just like this. As long as I live, I will never understand why a single human being would vote for Trump. And this is an attitude I think that is reflective across a lot of the elite class on the left. And yet we've had Trump for 10 years. More broadly, we've had these populist uprisings like Brexit across the West. And yet it just doesn't feel like the elite class are learning the lessons, despite the same thing echoing over and over. Why does that disconnect endure? I think Rob Henderson had coined this term, which I like very much. He called it luxury beliefs. And I think it's the failure of an out-of-touch elite class to understand the real appeal of Donald Trump. And they've consistently done this. In 2016, that misunderstanding was that Trump actually was somebody who embodied kind of the racist undercurrents that became overt in America all of a sudden. We switched, somehow switched from Obama, many Obama Obama voters to Trump and they couldn't understand. And the Dems kind of played into this idea that they were you know these people were a basket of deplorables, that they were merely acting out on white anxiety. There were a lot of op-eds about this it's not at you know the op op-eds kind of screamed, this is not about economic anxiety, it is about white anxiety. And that was a fundamental mistake because they misread the country completely. There were these states, the Rust Belt, where America's once hallowed industrial heart was hollowed out and had fallen into economic disrepair. Drug abuse was very rampant. And you had this you know growing opioid crisis that has now become a fentanyl crisis. And also young men were just not doing very well. You had a situation where over the last you know few years, it's become quite apparent that as a demographic, young men were not living longer, their health outcomes were declining, suicide rates were very high among men, and they were also starting to drop relative to women in terms of medium wage and degrees earned in education. So yet you had a situation where the left-wing media and the Democrats kept saying that somehow there was this overarching patriarchy and that that was the reason Trump was in office. And it just didn't square with any kind of reality. And I think that's kind of a good example of this kind of luxury belief where you have the sort of Hollywood class that live in gated communities that don't actually see what's going on in real America. And so they fight on very abstract levels. They kind of whittle it down to very simplistic notions of Trump is just a fascist and wants a horde power and that this is really a fight for freedom against authoritarianism, for democracy. And during the last four years, actually during the Biden administration, that was also their worldview in terms of geopolitics. They framed the entire geopolitical ah ah conflict as a kind of
00:27:29
Speaker
global fight for democracy on the republican strategy something which you said earlier which for me was the most striking element of the campaign was that trump went from being the star of the show the only star of the show over the last decade to being framed as the leader of a team. And I think this was particularly evident in the last three or four weeks of the campaign, where you did have figures like Tulsi Gabbard, like Dana White, like Elon Musk, like J.D. Vance is playing an incredibly prominent role, all popping up, RFK Jr., another one. This is a guy who has been almost pathologically incapable of sharing the spotlight for a decade. What do you put that strategic shift down to? I thought about this myself because you know during his administration, the aesthetics of who was in and out, there seemed to have been a revolving door. Almost every character was painted as some sort of clown eventually. um You had amazing, brilliant minds that stuck with him. I think you know there are people like Robert Lighthizer on trade, Matt Pottinger, just brilliant policy guys who were competent that was so on the Trump team. But on the other hand, you had these you know clowns like Laura Loomer that were in the Trump orbit. and And unfortunately, they became mouthpieces as well and and influencers for his campaign. You remember this ah Four Seasons fiasco where he was supposed to hold some sort of rally at a Four Seasons, but it turns out not to be at the hotel. It was at some you know remote landscaping company and everyone was laughing about it. Even Rudy Giuliani had kind of become a little bit of a laughingstock. And this time around, it seems like Trump has learned. And you know i I do think that there there is something to be said about the experience of knowing how Washington works, knowing all the ways in which he was pushed back the first time. He did campaign on draining the swamp. I don't think he was very successful at it during his administration, but I think he's learned a lot. And he has to trust the right people. There were a lot of people that he included in his cabinet, his campaign the first time that he turned out to be very disappointed by that let him down. And he is trying to fix a lot of those issues, but it comes with wisdom. And then there's the other thing of, you know, Trump is very old
Republican Party's Populist Shift
00:30:03
Speaker
now. I mean, and but surprisingly still, you know, a lot of energy. And I don't know if you've noticed, but since like the summer, there's been like a little bit of a croakiness in his voice. He he seems a bit mellow, um whether or not that's due to him being older or, you know, maybe something about the assassination attempt has changed has changed, has changed way he's kind of seeing life. There just seems to be a mellowness that wasn't there. And even last night, you saw him bring J.D. Vance in. It was very, very magnanimous to to him. It seems like something about Trump has changed. And I'm hopeful that this time he will learn how to delegate. He will learn to kind of put the right people in governance and actually double down because what brought him here is this very broad tent. Trump himself, when he is, you know, agitating, he comes across as somebody who hogs the bully pulpit. But when he broadens this tent and he brings in all these people who have been fighting on the populist side, right? You have RFK Jr. who's been very vocal about big pharma, big ag, and wanting to make America healthy. That's a very optimistic outlook. Then you have Elon Musk who is building rockets and and um achieving amazing feats, not just for America. It's really humanity has got to be proud of what Elon's achieved. And to have him part of the administration, to gut the bureaucracy, to help with making the government more efficient. This is a man who you know that you can trust because he's done it so many times before. He's shown the receipts. And Trump bringing all these people in, or at least all these people in also sticking up their own reputations and staking it on Trump says a lot because they have a lot to lose. Especially someone like Elon Musk has so much to lose doing this that there was almost no upside for him. Well, this is a good segue for us to look ahead to a Trump administration. You said we don't have, we're not certain that the Republicans will take the the House, but it looks very, very likely. So let's assume that it is a Republican clean sweep of the House, the Senate and the White House. Yeah. What does that look like? And the Supreme Court. And it is also worth noting that Alito and Thomas may very well retire in this ah in this next term, which would give Trump two further picks, which would potentially see a conservative hold on the Supreme Court for potentially 25 years. It's extraordinary. That being said, what does the next period look like? this how Let's say the next two years until the midterms. Paint a picture for what we can expect with that Republican hold on all branches of power. I mean, essentially, they'll have two years for sure, broad powers to pass whatever they want to pass through. I'm thinking of the tariffs that Trump has promised that are coming. you know One of the things that Trump has been very vocal about since his first administration was ah the need to counter China with tariffs. And he's promised 60% tariffs on some Chinese goods and then 10% tariffs just across the board, all other countries. We already have 100% tariffs on EVs. And we know that when tariffs are implemented, that is tends to lead to some sort of inflationary effect. But Americans, I think, will expect lower gas oil prices. He did mention that in his speech last night, his victory speech. Trump has always kind of leaned into this like idea as America as in an abundant net energy exporter. And I think he's just not hamstrung with the same kind of considerations for the climate agenda. And so he will push that through. He will get um gas prices down. We will see tariffs go up. And so a bit of an inflationary effect there are prices, in so especially on the goods tariff that very high rates will start to rise. But I also do think that Trump will re-industrialize America. This is something that that shot him into power the first time, bringing jobs back to America. you know He did paint global trade as a sort of zero-sum situation, right? And that appealed to a lot of working-class voters who had seen their really good jobs shifted overseas and American buying power in general fall relative to say China and other countries where manufacturing had shipped off to. So those are probably the immediate effects. Trump will also, in terms of foreign policy, will have, ah you know, he's been very vocal about Ukraine and Russia and will probably take that in a very different direction than what the Biden administration has done. Something you didn't mention on the economics was debt and deficit. And the reason you didn't mention it is because neither candidate really mentioned it throughout the course of this campaign, despite it being, in my opinion, a looming catastrophe. The US is now spending more money on the interest on federal debt than they are on defense. The great Neil Ferguson, who we had the show on the show recently, has a law of history that says that any great power that spends more on servicing debt than they're spending on defense will not remain a great power for long. Can we expect any change in this area or is the debt just going to continue to get bigger and bigger throughout the Trump term? I think trump's one of the biggest sources for for Trump's debt was and all the spending that he did on on COVID, post-COVID policies. I think he surrounded himself with the right people who care about the debt issue. I'm thinking of the billionaire types or the multi-millionaire types that have now you know thrown their ring into the hat. right you have This is something that's very different from first Trump admin 1.0, where he was kind of isolated. But now he has some major players in the business and tech community behind him. And what that means is they will also have influence. So I'm looking at people like David Sachs, Chamath, Bill Ackman, Elon Musk, the Peter Thiel's of the world, and they do care about debt. They understand that these are business people. um And I hope that they can hold Trump's feet to the fire. um I think you are right that you know in a both candidates actually would have continued. That's just what their record has shown and their administration has shown. They would continue spending and not much would have been done in their debt. But I'm hopeful in Trump's case because while he is a spendthrift on on some in in some domains, I do think that he is surrounded by the right people to rein him back in. My final two questions go to the future of the respective parties. To the Democrats, this is obviously an unmitigated disaster. They have, over the last 20 to 30 years, moved from being a party of the working class to a party of coastal elites.
00:37:23
Speaker
They've become increasingly obsessed with elitist identity politics issues, luxury beliefs. Will this result force a reckoning that could see a strategic realignment in that party? Or alternatively, will they double down on those ah ideologies which don't appear to have served them particularly well? In a way, the Democratic Party is completely on its back right now. It has no clear leader. Its bench is not very deep either. And if it is to emerge at all from the ashes, it does need to really do soul searching and figure out exactly what it is about the party and its policies that have pretty much exclusively appealed to white college-educated women and in college-educated men in general. how How is it that the Democratic Party that used to be the working-class party lost that birth to the Republicans. I do worry about the NGO industrial complex that surrounds the Democratic Party. I think that is a force that is not often discussed as well. These are the kind of the the charities that
00:38:42
Speaker
feed you know that make things like the homeless policy, homeless policies, the way the way they are, where Democrats are not enforcing, you know, or are trying to help homeless people get off the streets, get off addiction. You have these kind of ah charities that whose interest it is to simply collect more donations and and keep people there. That has been one of the biggest hurdles to dealing with a lot of the urban issues that plague progressive cities. I think also the Democratic Party has to realize that a lot of the issues that they were kind of banking on didn't seem to resonate. we we I think they thought that abortion would matter a lot more to women. But it turns out that Kamala Harris couldn't appeal did not appeal to women in any way more than Biden did. So her performance, even among women, you know we we were told that she was J.D. Vance was skewered for making that flippant comment about Charlotte's cat ladies and the media ran with it. But it turns out that even though the female vote for her was didn't actually show up in the way that they expected. And finally, is this result the final nail in the coffin for Reaganite country club republicanism? And has this now established, without any shadow of a doubt, the Republicans as a Margaret party moving forward? I think so. I mean, imagine that the Cheneys are dead in the water. I don't know where they go from here. the That wing of the Republican party has been completely eviscerated. It's striking to me, actually, that that this has been so convincingly shown in this election. they're The rhinos, they're all... it's the The new Trump Party is is the party of of tariffs, of trade protectionism, of ah repudiation of a lot of the neoliberal policies that we've seen over the last you few cycles. Melissa Chen, thank you for coming on far at will thank you so much for having me well thanks for listening to this episode of Fire at Will. If you enjoyed the show, why not consider a subscription to The Spectator Australia. The magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and arts reviews. A subscription gets you all of the content from the British edition of the magazine, as well as the best Australian political commentary. Subscribe today for just $2 a week for a year. No, I'm not joking. $2 a week for an entire year. A link is in the show notes.
00:41:50
Speaker
you