INTRODUCTION
The 2024 presidential election is over and Donald Trump is returning to the White House. Once again, his victory is a triumph of political ecosystems and how much bigger the right has been in the United States than the left and creating multiple systems to funnel people into their party. But while Trump's victory is a triumph for the right-wing political ecosystem, it took place within a larger political environment. Unfortunately for Democrats and the left, there are a lot of larger underlying issues that have made many Americans unsatisfied with the way things are in our current society. For a long time, most Americans have felt that the country's best days are behind it and also felt like their personal financial circumstances are worse than they were in the past.
Instead of realizing that and doing something about it, rhetorically and in terms of policy, many Democratic leaders have not responded to the disaffection.
Now, some of this anger and discontent is the product of right-wing indoctrination and propaganda when a Democrat is the president, but it is more than that. And it's an interesting and important fact to note that in her loss to Donald Trump, Kamala Harris got about six or seven million fewer votes than Joe Biden did, whereas Donald Trump got about the same exact number of votes that he did in 2020. So in many ways, the election was decided by people who stayed home. And then there also is another interesting and important data point, which is that Donald Trump won among new voters, people who had never voted before.
And we're going to talk about all of this and a lot more today with our guest Maura Ugarte. She is a filmmaker and professor of film at George Mason University. She's also the co producer of a 2012 film called "Divide," which we will discuss among many other subjects in the episode.
TIMECODES
00:00 — Introduction
05:19 — "Divide," Maura's film about building left solidarity
08:35 — How the center-left fell for JD Vance's "Hillbilly" fraud
14:33 — Biden's failure to inform the public of his popular policies
17:50 — Trump's new voter strategy and the limits of a "protect democracy" message
21:49 — How Democrats missed real suffering
25:45 — The decline of public trust and Trump's con artist pitch
32:51 — How Ross Perot foreshadowed Trump's appeal
34:10 — Fascism's critique of capitalism
40:37 — The power of solidarity to beat "divide and conquer"
49:53 — Blaming voters never works to win elections
54:24 — Hopeful messages for the future
GUEST INFO
Maura Ugarte on Twitter:
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"Divide" film
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Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux Community, a new content network of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.
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