Transcript of Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau on the Road Ahead for Democrats

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Uncertainty. Self doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Word art. Sorry, we have laugh lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today.

I'm Ashley Cee Ford, and I host Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice, produced with Vox Creative. For the past few years, I've seen a lot of hand wringing about Governor Ron DeSantis' agenda to end what he calls Woke Indoctrination. But we wanted to know, what does that mean? And how does this agenda actually affect the people living and working there, especially those who have benefited from the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that DeSantis' policies would abrupt. Check out the latest mini-series on Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast. Subscribe now.

Welcome to Raging Moderates. Jess and I are just thrilled to have the one and only Jon Fevero, co-host of Pod Save America here with us, Jon. You've been on the front lines of democratic, or I should say, I'm going to speak about Jon in the third person because he's very important. Jon has been on the front lines of democratic strategy and has seen plenty of political shifts. So given the outcome of the election, we thought he'd be just a great go-to in terms of trying to contextualize what's going on here and just help us. Help us.

Help this process.

Help us. Yeah, that's right.

He helped me.

There we go. We're all in. I think this is the first step in recovery. Anyways, Jess, why don't you kick us off here, John?

It's great to have you.

Thanks for having me.

Good to be here. I've been consuming your content like wildfire, which maybe is part of the problem that a highly educated white liberal woman from New York City has been living off of Pod Save America and Diet Coke before it gets banned.

You're not the first.

I won't be the last. But can you give us an overview of what the vibes are over in Pod Save America world? I'm I'm curious also, from all the interviews and the autopsies that you've been doing, who do you think has gotten it the best of the guests that you've had on?

That's a good question. I had Esra I had a client on to be a guest host with me last week, and I thought that he had a pretty good handle on the situation, mostly because... Look, it's another white college-educated liberal in big cities, who confirms all of my previous beliefs. It feels so good. I'm more of a... I try to look at the data, and one challenge we have is all the really good data that you can actually look at all the different demographic groups. That doesn't come for another couple of months, and Catalyst and Pew do that. But you can start looking at county by county results, and you can look at exit polls for broad attitudinal shifts, and if as long as you don't go by, break it down into small demographic groups. So I think overall, there was a global anti incumbent backlash over the cost of living, frustration over inflation. That could explain probably a lot of it. Where Trump and Harris both campaigned in battleground states, she outran the national shift to the right, sometimes significantly in Wisconsin, for example. But all that said, I think Democrats, going forward, need to figure out, how do we build a party that isn't a spike in inflation away from losing to an authoritarian because we have been not only polarized, but pretty evenly divided and polarized in the electorate for some time now.

I think if Democrats want to not just continue to be a coin flip away from losing, then we got to take stock of what went wrong. I think there's a lot of different explanations once you get beyond cost of living. I think there's also frustration over immigration. There's a hangover from the pandemic. Pandemic, a malaise that has taken hold here in the United States, but also all over the world, and that has led to all sorts of disorder, especially in cities. I think that we also have a communications challenge in that if you look at polls about news consumption, you see that people who read the New York Times, who listen to podcasts, who consume a lot of media. Harris won those voters by a large margin. It's not just like people who get their news from social media and YouTube and places like that voted for Trump, or most of them voted for Trump. It's that people who don't consume much news at all, who just don't really follow politics closely or follow the news all that closely, Trump won those voters as well. There are a pretty big segment of voters in this country who do turn out on election day to vote, but they They don't consume a lot of news.

They don't pay much attention to politics. They tend to not have college degrees. They tend to be younger. They tend to be more male than female, and they tend to be disproportionately Black, Latino, and Asian-American. And those are probably the... Again, we have to wait for the really good data to come out. But if you look at some of the counties, the biggest swings away from Biden's performance in '20 for Harris were in Hispanic counties, heavily Hispanic counties, heavily Native American counties, counties with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents. That was correlated with a swing away from Biden. And And then, of course, counties where cost of living was highest or correlated with a swing away from Biden. So that's my overall view, but I can obviously get into all the different aspects of this loss and where we from here.

I want to put forward a thesis, John, and have you respond to it. I'm generally open to feedback here because I recognize you're going to forget more about... Just generally. Well, I recognize you're going to forget more about this than I'm ever going to know. My thing or passion project is struggling young men in America, so everything I see is a nail and everything is one degree removed from this. But I want to put forward a thesis around what happened here and how you respond to it. The age group that swung most violently away from their 2020 endorsement of Biden towards Trump were 18 to 29-year-olds. And generally speaking, for the first time in our history, someone at the age of 30 isn't doing as well as his or her parents. I see that as the epicenter of this earthquake, and that the fault line, if you will, was masculinity, specifically, young men are doing so poorly that we still have this phenomenon in America where their girlfriends, mothers, and wives will vote for what they see as good or bad for their partner. And young men have and further faster than any demographic group in America.

Four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be addicted, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. And then the other age group that swung most violently towards Trump was 45 to 64-year-olds. I describe this loosely, and this is pure speculation, as their mothers. When your son is in the basement vaping and playing video games, territorial sovereignty in the Ukraine or trans rights takes a distant back seat. My thesis is the following. This was about failing young men in a view that if my son is failing or my kids are not doing well, I don't want change. I want disruption. And whoever brings that level of chaos or disruption, I will vote for because I am so upset about this first-time scenario where my kids aren't doing as well as me. Your thoughts?

I think there's definitely something to that. I've talked to a lot of the same people you have for either Pod Save America or my other podcast offline, which you've been on, which is all about what the internet's doing and what being on social media is doing to our world. Spoiler, nothing great. But I do think that there's a couple of things to tease out here. One, there was also was swing among young women in the 18 to 29 group. It's not just a masculinity problem, though clearly, young men swung more than young women. I did focus groups around the midterms, and I watched a lot of focus groups over this last couple of years. What struck me when I talked to young people, when I saw young people in the focus groups, was the gap between what young voters who are swing voters in focus groups feel are the main problems in their lives and with politics versus the young people you see on Twitter or on social media. I went into a lot of these groups thinking that they were going to talk about climate change and the war in Gaza and a lot of the other topics that we see debate all the time.

Cost of living was by far the number one issue that every single young person of every race all over the country brought up all the time. Specifically, it was around housing or rent. They thought, I'm never going to be able to move out of my parents house, or I'm never going to be able to move out of this group house where I have all these roommates, and I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to get a job that actually supports a family. Or I was talking to John DeLivolpe, who is a Democratic poster who really specializes in the youth vote. He said the number of young people in focus groups he spoke to who had college degrees and a job and were still homeless, homeless, shocked him. I think that there's absolutely... Look, I don't want to say that it's just financial or economic-related because I think obviously the general disorder or the feeling of, like you talked about the mothers who have their sons in the basements and then they're alienated and isolated, I think that all plays into it. It's tougher to tease out in the data, but Yeah, I think there's definitely a problem.

I think this younger generation is... It's different than... I'm a millennial. It's different than what we dealt with, which is after the economic crisis in 2009, that was more about How are we going to find a job? Because it was mostly about job loss. Now, a lot of these kids have jobs, and they're in debt because they went to college, and yet they're still not making enough money to really live or live well. That's causing all kinds of other problems as well.

I think as an extension of that, and we're about the same age, elder millennials, and came of age, obviously, you more closely than me, in the Obama era or starting your professional a life that way. It just feels so wildly different. I think a big part of that or the difference and why people are prioritizing their finances and leaving the rest of it or excluding it to vote for a Donald Trump is because we don't have strong senses of community. People are not part of things anymore. That speaks to Scott's isolation, the living in the basement, and all of that. But I feel like that's something that the Democratic Party used to do so well, foster those things, whether it were the religious institutions that you were a part of or things that are more politically aligned. I'm hopeful that that is going to be part of whatever this rebrand that's coming But do you think that was a big part of this, that everyone was just on their own path by themselves and not reading a paper and then ending up in this, we call it the Island of the Misfit Toys, with Trump and Elon.

Absolutely. I think it's not just not consuming news because they are on their phones all the time and they're on social media. But having all your relationships on your phone is the illusion of connection and community and having relationships, but it's just not real. It's not the same. It's very true of social media, but it's even true of if you're spending all your time just texting friends as opposed being in person because people don't get your tone and you can't really dig in and you can't have the- You can't touch anyone. You were meant to look at each other. Which is important. Right. Yes. Which is important. Do I think that the Democrats could have fixed that? No, that's obviously a larger societal problem. But I do think in our messaging, I mean, Barack Obama was the first Black President. I think because of that, because he was biracial when he was running to and because he had a foot in so many different worlds, he lived abroad, God, he lived here. It didn't make him deliver a message that was more specific to each individual identity and group. It was actually the opposite. He believed that whenever we were writing speeches, whenever he was talking, that he wanted to speak to universal aspirations and universal values that people held in this country, no matter what they look like, where you come from, what language you speak, what religion you you believe in.

I think that is really important, and we've gone away from that a little bit. I understand why, right? Because people want to in the Democratic Party, and they should stand up for vulnerable, marginalized communities and groups, and that is important as well. But I think you have to have a message that speaks to everyone. I really do. I think that we've gotten away from that a little Hey there.

I'm Ashley C. Ford, and I host Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice, produced with Vox Creative. I don't know about you, but I've seen a lot of headlines about how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to end what he calls Woke Indoctrination. Like in 2021, when Florida passed the so-called Stop Woke Act, that would limit how schools and businesses could talk about race and sexual identity. But we wanted to ask, how does it affect the actual people and business owners in Florida? To find out, I talked to a man named Antonio McBroom. Antonio is a Black business owner who says he found purpose in uplifting marginalized people. He even started his own company with a mission to help people like him navigate bias in the workplace.

If we literally can not address the real challenges of our marketplace, the real challenges historically that have led to this. If we can't be attention to talk about that in the workplace, it's a threat to our democracy.

Hear the story of how he and other business owners put the Stop Woke Act in legal limbo. Subscribe to Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast.

A guy who has been found liable for rape. A convicted felon won seven of seven swing states and pretty much increased his voter percentage across almost every demographic group and across almost every region. And my fear is that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and we're not taking this seriously enough. And you brought up something that I think is a potential problem and solution, and that is I believe the Democratic Party should absolutely get out of identity politics. And to your point, in Obama, talk about the middle class, talk about young people. But when you have a website that says who we serve and it lists 16 demographic groups that encompass 76% of the population, you're not advancing the rights of 76% of the population. You're discriminating against the 24%. Would your advice or what do you think of the idea of that the Democratic Party should just get out of identity politics and focus on economics, recognizing it's about the economy, stupid, it always is, and try to resist taking the bait in making trans rights the centerpiece or a centerpiece of our platform to just get to stop talking. I apologize for the word salad.

Didn't this election show us that people, that demographics aren't destiny, that people identify with their economic needs, not their specific identity?

Certainly, that's what the election results showed. I think it's a challenge for the Democratic Party because the Republican Party has gone all in on identity politics. If Democrats never say anything again or didn't have a spot on the website for all 18 identities, Republicans would still do their thing. I was reminded of this just yesterday because Nancy Mace, Republican from North Carolina, decided to introduce a bill saying that Sarah McBride, who's a trans woman who's just elected to Congress from Delaware, use the women's bathroom in Congress. One person, a bill just targeting one person in Congress. Sarah McBride basically tweets something like, I'm just here to help all people, and doesn't really want to get into it. And yet Nancy Mace did it because she knows it's going to get a reaction. And will it get a reaction from elected Democrats? Probably not, because a lot of elected Democrats get what you're saying, Scott. But she knows that it'll go far online and then people will get riled up, and then it'll be a big thing, and there'll be Fox segments, and then there'll be CNN segments, and then suddenly everyone's talking about it. And then to the voter who doesn't pay much attention to the news, if they just happen to see a headline or a Kairon that says trans issue in capital with bathroom, blah, blah, blah, they're probably thinking themselves, why is everyone so obsessed with the trans issue?

Why isn't anyone thinking about economics? But when you see how it started, you're like, well, what What are Democrats supposed to do about that? I'm not saying that we don't have agency here and that we should just sit back and do nothing. All I'm saying is that it is a complicated issue to command and direct attention in this information environment, which is so... It's not just fractured anymore, it's atomized. Everyone has their own personal algorithmic drip that they're getting. When the information environment is like that, it's just very, very difficult to draw people's attention to what you want to talk about, which is, I think, a big challenge the Democrats have to figure out.

I mean, that was the crux of the New York Times piece from the weekend that we both liked, and then people really didn't like us for liking that Adam Jentelson wrote about saying no to special interests. I actually think the Sarah McBride example is a perfect encapsulation of this because people are on the side of dignity. They are not on the side of things that they think are absurd, like Thomas competing against women in swimming. I noticed, working in a conservative media environment, that Kamala Harris, who's refusal to play the identity politics game, ended up hurting her. I think Blueprint has it. 83% of late deciders thought that she was for trans surgeries for undocumented people in prisons and that they/them versus you ad really clinched this for them. I'm embarrassed to say I thought it was a stupid strategy that they were spending the most on trans ads versus the economy, but I ended up with an egg on my face and having to deal with this for four years. How do you think that that needle can be effectively threaded, where you make it clear that we see you as an individual group.

It should be noted as well. Kamala had to do that town hall with Charlemagne because Black voters were demanding identity politics. We're saying, Tell me exactly you're going to give me it for my vote. How do we do that? How do we rebuild the coalition, the Obama coalition, plus Liz Cheney? Because I think that that did alienate people.

Oh, there's a lot there. Sorry, there's like 80 questions. No, that's good. I'm just trying to... I want to make sure I get it all. I do think, just to your point about Black voters, I think there is a challenge to... I am a college-educated elite White voter. I do not speak for non- College-educated white voters in rural America. No one thinks that I would. I do think that most Black voters, most Latino voters out in the country, aren't seeing their identity in the same way as college-educated, more elite, more Black voters and Latino voters. I do think that the education divide, in some ways, is more salient than the racial divide. That's certainly true in the election results. It is interesting about... I think in Kamala, when she did Shail Mane's show, she was like, Well, look, this is an agenda for Black America, but really, it's an agenda for all Americans. She wanted to keep emphasizing that. The Jentelson op-ed is very interesting, partly because the reaction to the op-ed is precisely one of the challenges he raises, which is that ad that everyone... I mean, it's like a shorthand to call it the anti-trans ad.

I believe if you took the gender the affirming care part out of that ad completely. You just said that Kamala Harris is for giving undocumented immigrants health care in prison. It still would have been damaging. The damaging part of that ad was not necessarily the trans part. It was the idea that Democrats are for special treatment for certain people and not for you, even if you're working hard. I think she should have rebutted that. I think that they should have responded to that. But look, the interest group thing that Adam raised, I have seen this in action. In 2019, when they had the Democratic primary, and they asked for a show of hands, who's for decriminalizing border crossings? They all raised their hand except for Joe Biden. And maybe Michael Bennett. On the next day on Pod Save America, I was like, I think that, look, I'm for a pathway to citizenship. I'm for protecting the dreamers, all kinds of things. But I do think decriminalizing border crossings is a bad policy. I ended up... I got so much shit from immigration activists. I had to do a call with immigrant rights groups, and I was like, Well, what is the challenge?

They couldn't really articulate why decriminalizing border crossings was a good policy. They just thought that if you were against it, you were against immigrants. That thinking is just not... It's not helpful. It's not true. Sometimes I think the reaction to Adam Zahpad, there's just not a lot of nuance in how we see these things. I believe that Democrats can successfully win elections by focusing on the economy, but also, like you said, standing up for the dignity of all LGBT Americans and immigrants who want to work hard and follow the law and contribute to this country, and Black Americans, and Latino Americans, and everyone else. You can still be a big tent party that stands up for people who need help, but you can also make your message broad, as long as you don't go down all these rabbit holes and try to fight every single issue, every single minor policy issue, as if that one policy position is the civil rights issue of our time.

I'm curious, John. I'd love to just have you stack rank from least crazy to craziest or just your general thoughts on the committees or the people being put forward for cabinet positions.

I mean, I think Matt Dates is horrendous.

He wins.

Well, and I think it's because of the... It's less about the person and about the position, right? I think once you... And look, I think Tulsi as DNI and Hegset, the defense too, are not great either, just because those positions, right? If you are an aspiring authoritarian and you are in direct control of law enforcement, intelligence, and the military, that's it. You got everything. Whatever the character of the people, which I know everyone's going to keep focusing on, Gates' problems and Heggsatz, all this stuff. That, to me, is less of an issue than having people in those roles that just are loyal to Donald Trump and Donald Trump only. When he wants to prosecute people, when he wants to arrest people, he wants to make people's lives miserable, he's going to be able to do it, and he's going to have people in those roles who are going to be able to do it. That's to say nothing about what it means for our foreign relations and the ability for other dictators to just get whatever they want out of Trump because all you have to do is flatter him.

I agree with you. Tulsi was my top anxiety pick of all of it. I know very well, that was complicated. But I agree with you. But I think the attitude of these people are going to get through, maybe one or two don't. But in general, this is what we're looking at is a healthier place to be. I've heard you guys talk about that. I think some people are like, We're going to resist like, 2016. That's just not the way that this is going to go because we don't have the mandate to do that. What are you guys at Crooked, on PSA, et cetera, doing or thinking about changing to reflect what just happened in the election, right? Like the Manosphere podcast that ended up being so powerful in the echo chamber that we're living in. Like, are you guys toying with anything new or just the way you approach your conversations or you think we can rebuild from the place that we are and everything's going to be fine? Because you guys are one of the most powerful voices on the left side of the spectrum by far, and your dudes, which, you Man, we're dudes.

Yeah, it's finally the moment for bros.

Yeah, you've got to say, Finally, you've made it.

Yeah, right. Thank God. I mean, it's just been waiting so long, of course. No, we're thinking about that now. We haven't really had a chance to sit down and have a bunch of strategy meetings about this. But my instinct here is I just want... I think the social media is just a horrible place for conversations to happen, for debate to happen. I do think we We want to have more interesting conversations where we disagree with people, whether it's people on the left, whether it's people in the center, people on the right, because I think that, and I say this to our staff all the time, we started Crooked not just to be a progressive media outlet, but to be a place where we can have respectful conversations across the pro-democracy coalition, let's say. A coalition that spans from AOC to Joe Manchin and Liz Cheney now. I think that that doesn't mean that we all have to agree because we're not going to agree, but we should be able to have these conversations where you dig into the nuance and subtlety of a lot of these issues while still approaching the person that you're disagreeing with in good faith and realizing that fundamentally, we all want the same things, and we're open to being persuaded, and we're open to saying, You tried to persuade me and it didn't work.

I'm still sticking with my position. That's fine, too. I think we want to have more of those conversations. Then look, I do think that the best work ahead of this last election, it happens on the ground, it happens organizing. Wisconsin was one of the narrowest margins for Joe Biden in 2020. It was the toughest of the blue-well states for Joe Biden in 2020, and it was the best state for Kamala Harris of all the swing states. Why? Ben Wichler, who's the party chair there, and the entire Wisconsin Democratic Party They have been organizing on the ground, rural areas, Republican areas, you name it in Wisconsin, going everywhere and talking to voters and building relationships with them, not just a couple of months before an election, but all year round. To our earlier conversation about social media and being alienated, disconnected, getting back on the ground as a party and just building relationships with people that are face-to-face, the Democratic Party, all parties We used to do that decades ago, and we've gotten away from that. I do think figuring out how we can help with on-the-ground organizing efforts, not just in the sense of resist and protest and marches, but building the relationships with people that are going to bear fruit once we get to an election.

So this really was the podcast. I can't imagine, and I do hope you, and you guys are thoughtful guys. He'll do this, but you're number one. I'm obsessed with rankings. You're number one in politics. You're one of the top 10 podcasts in the world. And in this election, I would argue, was a podcast election. While we were so excited about how many people were knocking on doors in Pennsylvania, Trump was just going on Manish here podcast. And a million people watching MSNBC, 45 to 55 million seeing him on Joe Rogan. So you guys really do. You not only play an important role, you play a singular role. Of the top 10 podcasts, you're literally the only... I mean, Esra is up there Sure, but that's about it. It really is a sea of red in a medium that has identified itself as seminal in terms of influence here. What can we do? We call ourselves Raging Moderates, and we get a lot of pushback that we're raging, but not that moderate. But what do people in the middle, moderates or center left, quite frankly, let's be honest, what can we do to try and bring more balance to a medium that is increasing increasingly important and dominated by red?

It's a great question. I always say we love more competition on our side. I think that... Look, it's a Democratic Party, capital D, more elite Democratic Party issue where I think a lot of Democratic politicians and the staff, because they're all in DC, we're out here in Los Angeles, and they still think that putting your boss on MSNBC or CNN is going to be bigger deal and reach more people than the Obama guys with the podcast. Even though they like us, and we've had a lot of their bosses on, most of their bosses on. But that's not the first thought. Maybe one takeaway from this election for a lot of folks in DC and Democrats who work on the Hill and work for Democratic politicians all over the country is either everyone's always welcome on Pod Save America, but also start other people. Other people can start podcasts, too, that are center left. There are some lefty podcasts. That's the other thing in the Democratic Party is that we're certainly one of the only center left or mainstream democratic podcasts out there. You've got Hassan Piper on Twitch who's got a huge following, and a lot of the Chapo guys, and there's a lot of lefty podcasts, but that is also a limited audience on the far left.

We want more competition, and more people should take podcasts as seriously as they do cable news.

So just before we wrap up here, John, while we have you, would you be comfortable making a couple of predictions about what you think the media gets wrong or conventional wisdom gets wrong about the upcoming year of the first year of the Trump administration?

I hesitate to make predictions because I'm always bad at it. I don't know if... Oh, I know. There has been... I've seen this narrative that, okay, the resistance is gone now and everyone's tired and no one cares anymore. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think what's happening is because of the As you pointed out, Scott, because it was a bigger loss than we faced in 2016, I think that people are taking the time to reflect and strategize and not just react, because I think there's been a lot of just knee-jerk reaction to Trump over the last eight years. I've been part of that myself. I think that it's probably better for the Democratic Party and the Pro-Democracy Coalition to step back and think about How can we retake power strategically and win elections and not just swing at every pitch? I think that work is going to start happening. I think that the reports of the death of the resistance are greatly exaggerated. I love it.

Thank you so much, John, for joining us. It was a real thrill.

John, you know what gives me hope? You know what gives me hope?

What's that?

John Favreau and Jess Tarlaugh, both incredibly smart, incredibly young, and most importantly, incredibly good-looking. The only Democrats that have any influence have to be really good-looking. The two of you give me hope. Thanks, John. Thanks, Jon.

I'm Ashley C. Ford, and I host Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice, produced with Vox creative. When I first heard about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis passing something called the Stop Woke Act, I was curious what that would actually look like beyond just political rhetoric. In many reports, this This new law would limit how people could talk about race and sexual identity at work and in school, which could basically uproot diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. So I wanted to talk to someone caught in the middle of all this, like Antonio McBroom, a Black business owner who sued the state of Florida because as he sees it, the Stop Woke Act hurts businesses like his that want to intentionally uplift marginalized people in the workplace. Check Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast. New episodes out now.