Regina de Heer: Where are we right now?

Speaker 2: We're at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 3: We're at Howard University.

Speaker 4: Howard University at Kamala Harris' concession speech.

Speaker 5: It's obviously been a very emotional day for a lot of people. How are you feeling?

Speaker 6: I feel sad, disheartened, not surprised, angry, but motivated to continue to mobilize and organize.

Speaker 7: I'm feeling like I can barely breathe. It's very sad and disappointing.

Speaker 8: Black women galvanized and built coalitions that you've never seen built before in 60 days, and this is the thanks that we get.

Speaker 9: You can tell she was sad, but her message was for us to continue our fight, and that's what we're going to do. The fight's not over.

Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome to the show. I have often complained that I want our elections to be different. I certainly want them to be less about partisanship and picking your team and treating it like a sporting match. I also want it to be less about picking your hero. I want to think less about candidates as these all-or-nothing avatars of our personal political identities, more about them as representatives, who we are agreeing to empower and we continue to check once they're in office, whomever they are. Mostly, I've always wanted elections to be more explicitly a conversation about what kind of society we want to have, what are our values, how we want to share this space. It struck me this past week that this time I kind of got the election I wanted. Neither party or candidate really tried to make it a policy debate. There was no Obamacare or banking reform or even real approach to the economy to fight over. Sure, those kinds of debates are often proxy wars for deeper questions about race and gender, and values, but I don't think we even had a proxy war this time.

This was an election in which we all pretty much shared the same anxieties. Feeling pinched by prices, feeling off kilter because of all the upheaval of recent years, and yes navigating big cultural changes. Surveys suggest these anxieties are universal across demographics and geographies. We agree on the challenges. Our public debate this time was mostly over whether we want to respond to those challenges with cartoonish levels of cruelty and domination or try something else, something more rooted in sharing and empathy and maybe some sacrifice.

A comfortable majority of Americans chose cruelty and domination or at minimum, chose to tolerate it in exchange for whatever they believe they'll get in return. Look, I do get that some of you listening will be offended by that statement. I just don't know what to tell you. There's just no debating the cruelty of Donald Trump's message and his plans, assuming he's able to flesh them out into operational policies. The only question is whether we accept cruelty as an approach to dealing with problems, and I am deeply disturbed that the majoritarian answer is, yes, absolutely, we do.

This week I have reached out to a friend and a colleague and a mentor in the movement for racial and social justice to help me and those of us who do not want to live in a nation governed by cruelty, to help us think about what now. Rinku Sen is executive director of the Narrative Initiative, which is a strategy hub for social movements that are working to root our multiracial democracy in ideas like equity and justice. She's also the former publisher of Colorlines, where I worked as an editor and writer for some years and learned a great deal from Rinku in the process. Rinku, welcome to Notes from America.

Rinku Sen: Thank you so much. It's amazing to be here.

Kai Wright: When we spoke earlier this week, you reminded me that you are not a hot-take kind of thinker, which is precisely why I want to talk with you in this moment. As someone who has spent your entire adult life in the racial and social justice movements, where's your head and heart at this point?

Rinku Sen: Well, on Tuesday, it's really hard to have experienced last week without thinking about 2016. In 2016, I was in Atlanta on election night and the next day we were going to be hosting pre-conferences before our big Facing Race conference. Then like 2,500 people were going to show up depressed and shocked and angry. I myself was depressed, shocked, and angry. This time I felt, no, I didn't feel surprised.

The shock factor was gone. I felt a very deep sorrow, just really sad for all of the people that I know are going to suffer and for all of the people who had worked so hard, not just through the election season, but the people who work so hard in their communities every day to try to make things better using whatever resources they can get their hands on.

My first reaction was deep sorrow. Now I'm torn between practicing the discipline that I have convinced myself and our team at Narrative Initiative we need to take up, which is deep self-reflection and radical honesty, and wanting to do things.

There's a lot of pressure to do things. People want to know what to do and we need to prepare for the chaos and suffering that's coming. The attacks that are coming. Yet we also need to give ourselves enough space to do the reflection that might lead us to a different outcome. Elections reflect the society, as you noted. The change we're after can't be about changing elections. They have to be about changing society. 40 years into my own work attempting to do that, I'm asking myself a lot of hard questions. I'm trying to practice some non-attachment to my truth. My truth is still my truth, but I'm just trying to put a little distance between my truth and my consciousness so I can listen-

Kai Wright: What do you mean by that?

Rinku Sen: -and so I can absorb all the other truths. Well, Anaïs Nin has a quote where she says, "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are." We see things as we are, not as they are. Being able to understand what I'm bringing to the picture and understand that I'm human and all human beings go through certain cognitive processes and it doesn't really matter what your politics are, you're still humans so you're still going to go through them. For example, each time I read a hot take, I've never met a hot take that I didn't love or hate.

That is the purpose of hot takes to make you love them or hate them. I'm really resisting because any thought I allow to take up in my head as the reason why this happened is going to confirm my own biases usually at this stage. I just know that my own biases are not telling me the entire story. They're telling me a legitimate part of the story, but it's not the entire story. If it was the entire story, we'd be in a different place now. I have to be able to get past my own defensive posture, which is natural and which I accept, but I can't stay there because it's my responsibility.

I chose the work of making racial, economic and gender justice in the world. Right now it's not going great. It's not just right now. For 40 years, it kind of hasn't been going great. Some things have been going great. I don't mean to throw out all of our accomplishments with one election, but I think it's really easy to imagine that most people think the way you do. When you get an unequivocal indication with data that they don't, the amount of time we spend in shock and resentment, I have to try to reduce that amount of time as a movement worker so that I can get to it.

Kai Wright: Because you don't have it. We don't have the time. I guess this is part of one of-- I mean, that's one of the things I am personally struggling with, is I genuinely believed, I am someone who really genuinely believed that the majority of Americans want what your organization names as a goal. Multiracial democracy rooted in equity and justice. And that we have a structural problem with our politics that creates minority rule. Here is a movement that's made all those words I just used into slurs.

A fair majority say they agree, and I'm wrestling with and I wonder-- Is it fair to say that those of us who want a multiracial democracy rooted in equity and justice, that we are losing the argument in the most fundamental way?

Rinku Sen: Well, I try to remember that not everyone votes. There are still many people who want our agenda to succeed and want to build a country based on mutual care and collective responsibility and transparency in all our systems. We don't have the majority, but we certainly don't have an active majority. Our coalition and our movement are simply not yet big enough. You want depth and you want leaders who are there knowingly. You don't want to be buying people into movement activity and action. It's a big country and it runs on supposed majority rule.

Billionaires control a lot of communication. In 2008 or '09 Kai, when you and I started working together, racial justice and racial equity, they weren't popular yet. At Race Forward, our goal was to popularize the whole idea of racial justice. I think we and our many comrades around the country did that, but once something becomes popular, it also becomes jargon. Once it becomes jargon, jargon is necessarily alienating because some people know what it means and some people don't. For some people, it's part of daily conversation. For others, never.

Kai Wright: We gotta take a quick brace and put a pin in this thought. I think it's an important one. I want to return to it. This is Notes from America. I'm talking with Rinku Sen, who is executive director of the Narrative Initiative. When we come back, we'll finish that thought and we can start taking your calls. 844-745-8255. Stay with us.

Regina de Heer: A big feature of VP Harris' speech this evening was about staying inspired and motivated through whatever is to come. How will you be staying engaged? How will you be staying motivated, if at all.

Speaker 11: I definitely came here to show that my support goes beyond winning or losing an election. I believe in what Kamala Harris stood for. Like her speech was saying, I'm going to continue to work in my community and continue this movement that she started.

Speaker 12: I don't know, because I'm still mad. I'm sorry. I'm not that optimistic. I'm mad, and I don't even want to look in people's faces anymore. How do you find that this man is okay? He's stealing our rights from us. I'm not okay. I'm not okay, and I don't know what I want to do.

Speaker 13: I will continue to work with the groups that I found along the way and support candidates that create policies like the policies that mean the most to me. I'm from Texas, and so it makes me think of an exit plan for my family that's still in Texas and continue to educate them on the differences between living in blue and red states.

Speaker 14: I'm a woman of faith, and so by the Grace of God and the strength and guidance from God, he will carry us through as he always does. We, as Black women, our middle name is resilience, and we will rise again.

Speaker 16: A big part of what I took.

Speaker B: From her campaign and her speech today was unity. Sowing dissension between people in this country is something that I am not going to do, despite me not having results to this election that I wanted to have. I'm going to continue to be a functioning and contributing member of this community, whether or not people want that, or not.

Kai Wright: This is Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. I'm talking with Rinku Sen, executive director of the Narrative Initiative. Her organization describes itself as a strategy hub for social movements that are working to create a multiracial democracy rooted in equity and justice. Ideas that a lot of us feel like have taken a blow in this election. We can take some of your questions and calls for Rinku. You can call or text us at 844-745-8255. That's 844-745-TALK. I want to be super clear, though, y'all. I'm just not going to put ugliness on the air right now.

If you're calling to troll this conversation or to rant about Donald Trump or whatever just this week, don't. If you have a genuine question or a good faith pushback to what you're hearing, chime in. Rinku, before the break, you were making the point about when ideas become popular, they also become jargon, and that's a problem. That racial justice, some ideas around racial justice at some point became more popular. Say more about that, where you're going with that point.

Rinku Sen: One of the campaigns you and I worked on together was the Drop the I-Word campaign.

Kai Wright: That's right.

Rinku Sen: We got the Associated Press to remove the phrase illegal immigrant in quotation marks. I'm putting them out of their style guide. I think words are very, very, very important. When I was a kid, I read the dictionary. I was new immigrant, I was learning English, and my sixth-grade classmates used to call me dictionary girl. They are super important. In the course of my life, I've seen the coalition of Latino, Black, Asian, and Indigenous people be called minority, then Third World, then people of color, now BIPOC.

I think what's emerging is Black and brown. Our ways of talking about ourselves change ourselves and our mission. I really remember this conversation I had with a Mexican American organizer here in Texas a few years ago, maybe five years ago. She said I can't send my staff to the Facing Race conference anymore. Big popular conference that Race Forward still runs, because they come back to Texas saying, with all these linguistic imperatives, we must now say Latinx. We must now say racial justice every line of every communication. She was like, they come back and I have to retrain them because a lot of our people here in Texas still call themselves Hispanic.

I can't have my organizers judging them for it or creating obstacles. It's already hard enough to get people to join with their neighbors and do something collective. I wonder, is what we call ourselves as important as what we do with ourselves? Is what we call the coalition as important as what the coalition actually does and moves forward? I just wonder, maybe I'll come out with everything should be the same and we shouldn't try anything different. I don't know. I think we need to consider our tone. The best statement I've seen is by my friend Dario Willis, who runs a community college, Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland.

That statement is all, this is what our college community is and how excellent we are and how well we take care of each other. Then there's one little paragraph, two lines at the end, that says, there might be problems coming up. That's actually, I think, much better than 90% problems in a statement, and 10%, oh, but we're going to hang together. She leads with something different than the problem. She leads with a solution that is already a community and communal experience there in Columbia, Maryland. I would like to see a lot, lot, lot more of that kind of sequencing and tone coming out of our movements.

Kai Wright: Is this what you mean when you talk about it's a moment for radical honesty in our movements? Is that what you're talking about? Is that self-assessment of things that are-- Actually also I mean, some of the stuff that you just said is exactly what the right and the MAGA movement has demonized about the movement. On some level you're saying, well, maybe they got a point.

Rinku Sen: I'm really not, because their point is to destroy us and I don't want to destroy us. I don't think we can be afraid of what they're going to do with our own self criticism. We have to be able to be self critical. Otherwise how do we grow as movements, as leaders? They're going to use our stuff against us no matter what, so we might as well make it the stuff we actually believe in for the moment and moving forward into the next 40 years. It's very hard to reflect and be in a defensive posture at the same time. Our defense right now has to be heavily material of our people and in our heads, we need to be asking a lot of questions.

Kai Wright: You pointed out that you made the active choice to be part of social and racial justice movements 40 years ago. How'd you come to movement politics?

Rinku Sen: The Black students on my campus organized me. That's what happened through-- Actually the Asian students on my campus organized me, but the Black students organized them. The Asian American student leaders came and got me. Actually two of my friends really came and got me, but then it was the Asian student organizations working together with the Black student organization that pulled me into a racial justice campaign, the results of which we still see on that campus. I went to Brown now 40 years later.

Then I got involved in the same year I got involved in some women's organizing around sexual assault, what we now call rape culture, but didn't call it that at the time. We won some things that are still on campus. It's hard for me to see this pullback and actually a lot of the stories about women getting these your body, my choice texts and that meme going round. That is really taking me back to walking past one of the frats on my campus who during spring weekend would hold up a card with a number on it to rate every woman who walked by the frat house, which was on campus and right next to the cafeteria, so you couldn't not walk by it all the time.

This is definitely painful.

Kai Wright: What was the high watermark, though, would you say? Where was the point where you looked up and thought, "Oh, wow, we can change the way people think about this stuff. This feels like we are on a winning track."

Rinku Sen: Well, when the Associated Press took Illegal Immigrant out of their style guide, that was a high watermark for me. I think the emergence of Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock, and I have being part of it and being an immigrant myself, I have many critiques of immigrant rights strategy over the years. Watching from 2006 on, young immigrants, watching the dreamers and many, many elders also get involved in the immigrant rights movement. There's a lot of recruitment still going on around the country and many excellent local organizations and campaigns and artists, for example.

I'm fortunate to be privy to their stories every day. I'm not an investigative reporter, so I get to just see the solutions and things, and it's beautiful. We need a lot, lot, lot more of it, but to go to that next level of movement scale, I do think we're going to have to do some things differently.

Kai Wright: Let's hear from Uchina in Warren County, New Jersey. Uchina, welcome to the show. Am I pronouncing your name correctly?

Uchina: Yes, sir. Love the show. You guys are great company on Sundays.

Kai Wright: Thank you very much. Go ahead.

Uchina: I live in one of the more whiter parts of New Jersey. I'm Black and I have a lot of white co-workers. I was talking to them recently. They switched from Biden to Trump, and the big deal they complained about was they said that Biden felt like he was more radical than they thought, and he's pushing things like obviously, as your host respectfully say the terminology changes. They're saying things like they're sending me to New York City because it's too-- Some of them are older, using terms like politically correct. How do you explain or offer a solution to voters to Trump crowd that are saying things are getting too radical change or too rapid?

Thank you, host and you guys have a great Sunday evening.

Kai Wright: Thank you, Uchina. People who have this sense, it connects to what you were saying, Rinku, of that something is too radical, largely based on some of the language. How would you respond to that?

Rinku Sen: I had this experience years ago where I was doing a racial equity training for a group of police staff or a police department in a rural, small city, and they had zero desire to hear from us. Like, none. They started obstructing from the first minute on. That was pretty early in the practice of sharing pronouns to start. They were extremely bothered by the pronouns. I think they were maybe as bothered by that as by the idea that someone was going to accuse them of systemic racism in the police department. Either that or the pronouns were just the easiest thing to attack first. For them to attack first--

Kai Wright: It's the thing that stood out.

Rinku Sen: With introductions. We had lots of mess and drama, and my transgender colleague, who is Black, was like, "I gotta go." I let them go because I was like, "I get it. It's okay. You go." I had the police chief come and tell them they didn't have to stay. They could all go. Because I was like, this is not cute. Halfway through the afternoon, one of the women who had been just so resistant finally asked me, why do you do these pronouns? What is this about? I said, because sometimes people present differently from who they are, and you kind of want to know so that you can treat them as they are. See them as they are.

She was like, oh, okay. Did I convince her of anything? I don't think so. The lesson I took is, if you're going to introduce a new idea, it is important to say why a new practice is really just-- No one has ever experienced it before, or they're starting to, and it's still wildly different from anything we've done before. I think there is actually burden on us. Maybe not the transgender person, but whoever is flanking. There were other people on the team to stand up for the practice in a way that doesn't dismiss the discomfort of the people who are resisting.

If you dismiss their discomfort, then they've stopped listening to you, and why should they? Because you're not listening to them. We have to discern when such a conversation becomes abusive and when it's deeply uncomfortable. Deeply uncomfortable and abusive are different things. Those are judgments I can't make for anyone else. I can only make them for myself, but I am trying to grow my tolerance level, and it is tolerance. It's not like, embrace. It's tolerance. I would say you could ask your white colleagues some more questions. Why do they feel it was so fast, what felt fast to them? Do they know any transgender people or whatever change they're objecting to?

Do they know any of the people who have been advocating for that change? I would ask more questions at this stage than give them facts or another way to look at it, because the answers to those questions will give you some hints about what might help to expand their perspectives.

Kai Wright: We've got a couple minutes left here. I want to ask you about the story of the rightward drift in some communities of color that is a big part of this election. Exit poll suggests it's most profound among Hispanic men, but not solely. Just generally, now are you wrapping your head around that data and importantly, that conversation that it's starting?

Rinku Sen: I just think we can't make assumptions about what people believe. People believe a lot of things, including our own people, Indian Americans, in my case, other Asian Americans. Just because we are of that group doesn't mean that we know everything that that group of people thinks. Another story, I was in a discussion a few years ago, and somebody said we don't have to explain the problem to Americans. Everybody knows what the problem is. Everybody doesn't know what the problem is. Some people think you're the problem, clearly.

Some people, and I think billionaires are the problem, but that doesn't seem to be a popularly held position right now. We need to do so much more listening. It's not just listening, we need to be organizing. Because the way you figure out where you have common interests and who has the potential to change, to expand their thinking and their community in our direction is to try to actually improve things together that everybody wants improved.

Kai Wright: Rinku Sen is executive director of the Narrative Initiative. Rinku, thank you so much for this time.

Rinku Sen: Thank you for including me, Kai.

Kai Wright: Coming up, although my own lens on this moment is about much more social movements than electoral politics, there is no denying that elections have changed power in this country. Just ahead, we'll be joined by a Capitol Hill reporter to talk about the coming power structure. Stay with us.

Katarina Barton: Hey, it's Katarina Barton from the Show Team at Notes from America with Kai Wright. Something happens to me when I listen to this show. No matter the topic or the guest, I can always think of someone I want to tell about what I just heard, and I do. If you're thinking about who in your life would enjoy this episode or another episode you've heard, please share it with them now. The folks in your life trust your good taste, and we would appreciate you spreading the word.

If you really want to go above and beyond, please leave us a review. It helps more people, the ones you know and the ones you don't, find the show. I'll let you get back to listening now. Thanks.

Kai Wright: This is Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. I'm joined now by reporter Brandon Tensley, who covers national politics for Capital B News. Brandon, welcome back to Notes from America.

Brandon Tensley: Hello. Thank you for inviting me back.

Kai Wright: Listeners, now we can also take your questions about Capitol Hill and Washington and the power change that's coming and whatever it is that you want to know that Brandon might be able to give you some insight on as we face a new Trump administration. 844-745-TALK. Brandon, as we've been discussing so far this hour, there are, of course, a lot of emotions in this election. You have been covering it, talking to voters for the past few months about how much it has mattered to them.

We did hear some of that, by the way, in that tape from Harris' concession speech. We played some of the responses that people had that were in the crowd. What are some of the things that you have heard just in the course of this campaign that really resonated with you that suggested how big a deal this has been to people?

Brandon Tensley: Yes, I think some of the biggest ones are just there's a lot of fear, uncertainty. I think for some people, they voted for Donald Trump because they thought like, "Oh, I know he says all these things, but I don't think he'll actually follow through on them." From a lot of my reporting, talking with people in marginalized communities, specifically Black communities, people are like, I don't see a reason not to believe that someone who centered his campaign on talking about revenge, talking about how he can make vulnerable communities even more vulnerable, why he wouldn't follow through on any of those.

I've heard a lot of people talking about just being very anxious about what a second Trump administration that is friendly to project 2025 and those ideas. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of anxiety.

Kai Wright: We are, of course, also in the moment of autopsy and recrimination for the Democratic Party's campaign. I don't have a huge appetite for those force modems this time around, but a couple of things I do want to bring up is given how much attention was paid to Black men, including, I have to say, on this show, can you recap what we now know about how Black men voted?

Brandon Tensley: Yes, I think Black men voted as predicted, which is to say, essentially, the numbers were the same as before in 2020. I think even though I think Black women were the slice of the electorate that were the most pro Harris bloc, Black men were in second. I think there had been this idea or this narrative earlier in the year about whether we were going to see this massive racial realignment in our politics and whether Black men would be leading that realignment because they were attracted to the ideas of Donald Trump's campaign, and we didn't see that.

To me, I think it just raises questions about what do we do with some of the concerns and the information that we're getting from voters when they're talking about they're worried about their pocketbooks. I think there's a very clear understanding among the vast majority of Black voters that they can maybe like some of the ideas coming out of a Republican campaign while also being able to say, but I don't want everything that comes with that campaign. I know to sort of like [unintelligible 00:35:48] the known factor, the known party, and I think that's what happened with this election.

Kai Wright: It's interesting because we also see that in a different direction with a number of the ballot initiatives. There was so many places where ballot initiatives protecting reproductive rights, protecting the right to choose passed, and Donald Trump won overwhelmingly. There seems to be a lot of ability to separate the party from particular issues in this particular election in a way that feels new to me. Does that feel new to you? I don't know. What do you think about that?

Brandon Tensley: Yes, no, I think that's a great observation because I've heard some-- I've been talking with some people who say that one thing that we can maybe take away from this election is people almost seem to think of the presidential level as its own bank, as its own entity that is separate from any of these down ballot initiatives. In this case, it shows the overwhelming unpopularity of the Biden administration, but not even just the Biden administration in a unique way.

We've seen a lot of people talking recently about how globally incumbents have been losing shares of the electorate, have been voted out of office, and how the Biden administration follows that pattern where people who were in office during COVID and during the recovery period after COVID, when inflation became a huge challenge, it was almost just an impossible uphill battle. I think maybe because the Democratic ticket changed when Kamala Harris came to the top of the ticket at the end of July, I think there was maybe this idea that Democrats could overcome what seemed to be that incumbency challenge.

I think what we-- Not even what I think. I think clearly what we saw was that that was not possible. I think that's partly why you saw this difference between people willing to vote for Donald Trump at the top, but then they also wanted these more Democratic big D, Democratic friendly policies and lower ballot initiatives.

Kai Wright: I think we have a caller that has a question related to this. Let's go to Zeke in New Hampshire. Zeke, welcome to the show.

Zeke: Hi. Thanks for having me. I'll try to keep it short. Related to what your guest was just describing this kind of bigger pattern. I'm wondering what you and your guest make of-- I feel like the media is coalescing around this economy inflation narrative. I find it personally suspicious. I feel like, is the economy a cover for some of the kinds of hateful feelings, Kai, that you opened the show describing. I wonder what you and your guest think about this economic narrative when it comes to the reality of what Trump campaigned on.

Thank you.

Kai Wright: Thank you for that question. It feels to me like multiple things can be true at once. I'm thinking about some of the stuff that Rinku Sen was just telling me, but what do you think, Brandon?

Brandon Tensley: I am feeling deja vu. The economic anxiety explanation was what I think a lot of newsrooms latched onto in 2016. Just like in 2016, I'd like to push back against that or to try to complicate it partly because I just say that Black people deal with economic challenges just as much as anyone else, but Black people still overwhelmingly do not vote for Trump. To give too much explanatory power to people voting according to their pocketbooks, I think we also have to just think about what other dynamics might be at play there.

Kai Wright: It is really true, all of these conversations. You have to take out the existence of Black people and have some sort of asterisk over our choices at the ballot boxes in order to explain away certainly the economic anxiety, but it's not only that one. It's just over and over again, you just have to not acknowledge the fact that Black people are also poor and working class. Where do we stand in terms of the shift of power in Washington? You're covering Washington. That change seems total at this point. Are there any places you see for breaks or guardrails on the incoming president's whims?

Brandon Tensley: I think that is the scary thing, I think for a lot of people I've been talking to for stories is that compared to in 2016, when even the Republican Party more broadly seemed less sort of taken over by the sort of MAGA elements of the party that we see today, there was still a hope that the Republican Party would restrain Donald Trump, but now that we've seen the shift farther to the right and sort of MAGA becoming more of a defining or animating part of the Republican Party, whether we're talking about judges who Trump will appoint, whether we are talking about some of the lawmakers who are winning their elections, people willing to sort of go along with what Trump wants.

I think there's a real fear among a lot of people that there will be less checks even internally within the party, certainly fewer checks from Democratic lawmakers since they won't be able to have a majority in the Senate, for instance. The Supreme Court, I think, for a lot of people is already seen as beyond help, at least for the foreseeable future in terms of being able to have Democratic nominees appointed. I think there is this uncertainty that people have about how, like, what will a second Trump administration, especially an administration that was fueled so much by this desire for revenge, this desire for what people did to me, and now I want to use the powers of the state to exact revenge.

When you can do that without being checked by your party, certainly when you can do that without being checked by an opposition party, I think that is pretty scary. I think, Kai, to your question about any potential silver linings or highlights, I've heard people talking a lot about on the local level, on state levels, in North Carolina, for instance, where Mark Robinson lost his race to be governor. I think the fact that he was this very extreme embodiment of MAGA Republicans, but to see him lose in that state, I think is reassuring for a lot of-- I'm thinking of communities who have been on the receiving end of a lot of his rhetoric.

I'm thinking Black communities, trans communities. I think we are seeing, even if the Democrats lost on the national level, the presidential level, we are seeing some bright spots on state levels and local levels where I think it's possible to sort of shore up protection for vulnerable communities.

Kai Wright: On the national level, and thinking about the federal government, what about civil rights groups? There was such a massive and immediate mobilization in 2016 when Donald Trump won, and everyone was concerned about the threat to those vulnerable groups, but that was a time when there was still some questions about the mandate that he'd actually received. There was the Russian interference and all of that. This time, the mandate is crystal clear. He won. Have you heard conversations about how that does or does not complicate the mobilization amongst these more, at least the more established groups, that work in Washington?

Brandon Tinsley: Yes, I think in terms of the mandate, that is absolutely something I've heard people talking about, in terms of at least in 2016, for a lot of these groups, they could say, well, Trump didn't get the popular vote. There was this degree of thinking that, okay, this government doesn't quite feel legitimate, and so we need to be especially careful about what it does and who it attacks. I think this time around, the legitimacy element of that argument becomes trickier. I do think that a lot of groups, civil rights groups, I'm thinking, the NAACP, the LDF, they are absolutely still ready to protect these groups. I think a lot of that is because they are going to assume that Trump, or at least the people in his orbit, are going to do some of the things that they said that they are going to do when we're talking about voting rights when we're thinking about anti-affirmative action policies.

I actually think a lot of these groups, they're prepared as they would have been, or they are as prepared as they were in 2016, in part because we've already seen some of the fallout from that 2016, that first Trump administration. I think civil rights groups are very much ready for more of the same.

Kai Wright: Let's hear from Barbara in Oregon. Barbara, welcome to the show.

Barbara: Hi. Thank you. It strikes me that the core issue right now is that the working class is looking for help and they believe Trump was the one who's going to help them. I wonder if there's a way and what would happen if people who feel like they embrace policies that would help the working class if they were to accept the premise that Trump is going to help them and join that working-class or those voters in watching for evidence that he's actually doing something for them. Is there a way to do that?

Kai Wright: That if people across--

Barbara: --antagonistic relationship.

Kai Wright: To clarify what you mean, if people, Republicans and Democrats, lefties and righties alike, who believe that something needs to be done for the working class took this moment to say, "Okay, well, these working-class voters say that they believe in Trump, so let's get with them and see what happens. Is that, that's your point?

Barbara: Yes. Right. We're allies, we're with you, and let's all make this work out for us.

Kai Wright: Okay. Thank you for that, Barbara. I guess I don't know if you want to have an opinion about that or not, Brandon, but in terms how legible that idea is in Washington right now, I mean, how many people do you hear? You're welcome to have an opinion about what Barbara said, but how realistic is what she just said in terms of what you're reporting on?

Brandon Tensley: Yes, in terms of that coming to pass, I don't see it being super realistic. I also do think that a lot of the policies that Democrats said that they want are things that could be if they're popular enough among voters, maybe they're things that'll be taken up by Republicans or at least Republicans when it comes to the state level. Because I do think that Republicans probably are looking at how do we maybe temper some of the things that we were saying in the heat of the campaign, but in terms of any cross-partisan, cross-communication, I don't know how much I really see that playing out in Congress, at least.

Kai Wright: How anybody's going to have an appetite for the bipartisan version of criminal justice reform, but applied to the economy in this moment feels pretty far-fetched. One of the things I'm remembering embracing for is the way in which, especially as reporters, we all had to drink from the fire hose during the first Trump administration. Whether that was a strategy or just happenstance from the overall chaos that the president enjoys, it was just so hard to sustain yourself in a daily news cycle.

Just as we wrap up, how are you preparing for that moment as someone covering national politics, how are you thinking about what's to come for you?

Brandon Tensley: Yes, I've been thinking about this obsessively over the past several days. I think one thing that we are really focusing on at Capital B, and this is what we've been doing since the day that we launched, is thinking about people, centering our stories on people. I think it's for us, it's less about Trump said X or he tweeted whatever thing and we need to write a story about it. I think if we're looking at what are the potential policy implications for what someone is saying. If you have someone who's saying we're going to take fluoride out of the water, I don't know.

Think about what might that mean for-- We're thinking, what might that mean for Black communities who already struggle with various water safety issues? I think that helps to cut through some of the noise to think about. Like, if you can bring it back to what does this mean for people's real, everyday material lives, I think that helps to look past some of the more maybe outlandish things or I think to use that metaphor, drinking from the fire hose, which absolutely happened in 2016, I think that helps to mitigate that some.

Kai Wright: We'll have to stop. Brandon Tensley covers national politics for Capital B News. Brandon, thanks for your time. Notes from America is a production of WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Regina de Heer. Theme music and sound design by Jared Paul. Matthew Marando is our live engineer. Our team also includes Katerina Barton, Suzanne Gabber, and Siona Petros. Lindsay Foster Thomas is our executive producer, and I'm Kai Wright. Thanks for spending time with us.

 

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