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I tend to focus on, you know, what are the big structural forces here? Because it's very easy to devolve into, you know, a game of Clue, where was it Latinx in the billiard room or was it, you know, defund the police in the kitchen that did it? Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk.
A lot has been made of the diploma divide in American politics over the past decade. Voters with a college degree and those without moving in opposite political directions. What's perhaps less commonly noted is which side of that divide has the strength in numbers.
Only 38% of American adults have a college degree, according to the census. The composition of the electorate can change from year to year and place to place, but nationally, it is never the case that college-educated voters make up the majority. The so-called working class takes that distinction. And if you've been paying attention to politics lately, you probably know that in 2016, white working class voters shifted decisively to the right.
In 2020, working class voters of color followed suit to varying degrees, though still giving Biden a clear majority of their support. Biden made gains with white voters in that election.
This has left both parties with the understanding that going forward, a multiracial working class majority will play a pivotal role in their electoral fortunes. So why have we seen these recent shifts to the right? And what will both parties do to either capitalize on or reverse these trends? My guests today have recently published books about precisely that, but from opposite sides of the political aisle.
Democratic political scientist Rui Teixeira co-wrote the book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes. Rui is here with us now. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us, Galen. And also here with us is Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, who wrote the book,
Party of the People, Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition, Remaking the GOP. Welcome to the podcast. Great to be here. It's really nice to have both of you in person, so thank you for coming on. I have to ask you first question, at what point did you two realize that you were writing very similar books from opposite political perspectives?
I would say maybe about six months ago would be my recollection of it. But I knew you were writing a book. I just didn't know they were coming out on the exact same day. Have you guys talked about it since? Hey, come on. Yeah, yeah. No, we've talked about it.
We haven't laid any nefarious plans for capitalizing on that. It's just a coincidence. But it was remarkable to look on Amazon and see Patrick's book, which I had been aware of, coming out November 7th. My book coming out November 7th. So, you know, it's just...
Serendipity, you know? Okay. The universe works in strange ways. Not to put you really on the spot, but have you read each other's books? I have. I have read Patrick's book. Okay. I read it in manuscript before it came out. Likewise. All right. Well, then, you're experts on each other's work as well as your own. Let's start with this. Patrick, I set the stakes in a pretty basic way, just that there are more non-college-educated voters than there are college-educated voters. Okay.
What are the stakes for the Republican Party as you see them? So the stakes are if you go back to 2012, and I think that many people in the sort of so-called normal Republican Party romanticize the pre-Donald Trump era. But if you go back to 2012, the Republican Party was basically given up for dead when you look at the autopsy report that came out after the 2012 election, which laid out the stakes.
pretty clearly. The Republicans had just lost an election to Barack Obama. They themselves had expected to win. They lost pretty decisively and they lost because of a decisive 80-20 loss among non-white voters. And, uh,
you really had this surge in this idea that Rui talks about, right? The demography is destined the idea that as the country becomes more and more non-white, that the Republican Party is really going to struggle to adapt to a new era if they can't capture more of that support. So they come out with an autopsy.
And four years later, Donald Trump goes and does the exact opposite of what the autopsy said in terms of appealing to Hispanic voters and goes and actively turns them off and yet manages to win with a coalition that includes more white non-college voters, more white working class voters, which he intended to get, but also doesn't seem to really drive away very many Hispanic voters away.
before easing up on that rhetoric, and then he gets them, more of them, four years later. So it seems like, to me, the stakes are the same as they were when that autopsy was written. The goal is the same, to how does the party adapt to changing demographics in the country? But the solution...
turns out not to have been this sort of, well, we need to moderate on immigration or social issues. It seems to have been turning the party in a more populist direction.
And Rory, what are the stakes for the Democratic Party as far as you see them? Well, I think the stakes are pretty big. I mean, you know, this historically is the party of the working class. And we're now in a situation where not only have white working class voters turned against the Democrats in a big way, we're seeing a radical decline in margins, advantages for the Democrats among non-white voters.
working-class voters. And it's interesting to think about that 2012 election, right, and how it was played both among Republicans and among Democrats. If you look carefully at the results from 2012, it's pretty clear that Obama wins that election, partly because he adopts a populist tone against Mitt Romney, promotes the auto bailout, and he does quite well, relatively speaking, in the upper Midwest among these very same white working-class voters.
recovering a lot of the ground the Democrats had lost in 2010. But that was completely forgotten in the aftermath of the election. Not only the Republican autopsy, but Democrats summed it up as, well, okay, this is the rising American electorate. This is a coalition of the ascendant. What we have to do is put our feet on the accelerator and
And just keep on going. And the demographic shifts that are taking place, the way the country is changing will, in fact, grow our coalition. And there's really nothing to worry about in terms of the white working class. Well, of course, as we now know, there was a lot to worry about. The brew filling.
on the Democrats in 2016 in terms of the white working class, particularly in the upper Midwest. And the result was Donald Trump was the president. Now, interestingly, as Patrick's pointing out, despite the way Trump ran in 2016 with that heavily populist orientation around trade and around immigration, had some unkind things to say about Hispanics, he didn't really suffer for it very much. In fact, if you look at the margins of
For Clinton, as opposed to Obama, they were pretty similar. She didn't benefit that much from that. And then, of course, fast forward to 2020, we see the non-white working class bail out in a big way. And the Democrats, despite four years of Donald Trump, total shocked everybody. If you look at the, for example, the New York Times poll that just came out, we see Biden leading among non-white working class voters by 16 points.
That's really bad. Back in 2012, Obama led among non-white working class voters by 67 points. And even in 2020, it was still like 48 points. So this is just very noticeable the way working class voters of all ethnicities are turning away from the Democrats. And if you look at the broad working class versus college educated split we continually see in polls now, they're essentially inversions of each other.
And again, in the New York Times poll in those six key swing states, Trump up by 15 points among working class voters overall and Biden up by 14 points among college educated voters overall. But as you were pointing out, Galen, there are a lot more working class voters than college educated voters. That's true all over the country. And it's true in every one of the swing states are going to decide the 2024 election.
So it sounds like you both agree about what has happened in American politics. Do you think that's fair?
I think we come at it from originally from two different political parties, but our, you know, I think our diagnoses are pretty compatible. And what do you think? So you describe both of you a situation where there has there's a gulf, a cultural gulf essentially created by this diploma divide. What do you see as the principal divides that follow suit? Right. Obviously, education is what you're saying is the root of it all. But expound on that.
There's a different shape of public opinion, I think, when you actually analyze survey data from working class voters across the racial divide and
specifically white college educated voters. So in at the outset, I really talk about this multiracial populist coalition. And when we talk about it being more numerically superior in numbers, what I define it as it's the white working class plus nonwhite voters. Now, why throw all nine white voters into the same bucket?
with white working class voters. How does that make sense? Even the college educated, right, non-white voter, it's because you're seeing them move in a similar direction during these Trump era elections. What's behind that is you have a lot more voters, not just in the white working class, but black, Latino and Asian voters,
who, when you ask them survey questions, and this is an analysis done off the Cooperative Election Study, a survey of 60,000 voters, allowing for very granular and detailed data, they're more likely to be somewhere in the middle on policy issues across the board.
And then you look at what this looks like for white college voters specifically. And it is very unique among all the demographic groups in that you have these two twin peaks, one on the far right, one on the far left, and virtually absent gulf in the middle. In terms of the distribution, let's say, of ideology and public opinion among members of this multiracial populist coalition looks like a bell curve that peaks in the middle.
As a result, I think that there has been a tendency, yes, that really talks about on the left to lose sight of where specifically large segments of the Democratic coalition are both politically and ideologically.
But would you suggest then that also the college white college educated Republican elite is also sort of more ideologically aligned on the right? They believe things about taxes or abortion or religion that does not jive with that bell curve that you just described. Yeah.
Actually, this has been a hidden strength of Democrats over the years that they've been able to have a coalition, right, that includes many non-white voters who are more moderate in their beliefs. And you have a substantial about 22 percent of the Democratic primary elected as black.
They are overwhelmingly, I would say, more. I mean, there's a fair amount of liberal liberals in there, but they're overwhelming 60 percent, I believe, either moderate or conservative, which serves as a counterweight to sort of more ideological candidates. As a result, I think.
This is what nominated Joe Biden. The problem is, I think, really talks about is when it comes time to govern. Right. Are those priorities being reflected in the so-called shadow party? When you talk about an issue like, you know, the fights needed to fashion, let's say, the Inflation Reduction Act.
And it was all the climate provisions that made it, but not the social spending. Well, who is in favor of those climate provisions? It is primarily upper class Democrats. Who was more in favor of the social spending? It was, you know, like you mean it was across the board or something. It was across the board, across the party. So oftentimes in governing and in terms of how the party presents itself between elections, it is dominated by that college educated party.
intelligentsia. Yeah, I mean, if you look at, you know, it does go across a wide range of issues, issues about race, issues about gender and gender ideology, crime, immigration, some stuff in the schools, and of course, the climate issue. It's very clear that the white college-educated liberal component of the Democrats, which punches way above their weight, is so influential in the shadow party. Their views on a lot of these things are just so different than a lot of the working class people who
still support the Democrats to some extent, but obviously they're bleeding support. I mean, take Hispanics, for instance. I mean, one conception of Hispanics that was so common in the teens among Democrats is these are immigration voters, fundamentally, and they should be thought of as people of color. And we saw in the late teens, and certainly with the George Floyd summer, this sort of conception arose that if you're non-white in America, you live in this kind of dystopian society.
hellhole, right? This is a white supremacist society shot through with structural racism. And actually, if you ask Hispanic voters about this, particularly Hispanic working class voters, they don't believe any of this. They believe racism is fundamentally a matter of individual discrimination, not a society that's structurally racist. And they don't think of themselves as living in that kind of hellhole. They're
upwardly mobile, working-class people. They care about their families. They care about their jobs. They care about health care. They just want to get ahead. And that's what they always thought they had with the Democrats. And when Democrats start telling them that that's not really what it's all about, they should think of themselves as oppressed people of color. This is really...
a non-starter. And they're not that happy about illegal immigration either. I mean, if you look at a lot of the data, you look at how people felt in Texas and so on, they're not down with the program of having really porous borders and having tons of people pour over and then taxing resources and so on. And, you know, obviously it creates competition in low-wage labor markets. So there's a lot of things Democrats got wrong about Hispanic working class voters, which I think is emblematic of how they err on a lot of these other fronts.
So I think one of the things that you're describing here as this cultural gulf, and I think what you say is wrong with the Democratic Party, is an activist class sort of throwing out ideas, things that they care about, but...
arise. They put them into the ether. Some of them end up being very unpopular. Many of those unpopular ideas are done away with. To that point, no one is talking about defunding the police at this moment in the Democratic Party. In fact, if anything, they're talking about increasing funding for police and the popular ideas they may keep some
Some past examples, I would say, are, say, like same-sex marriage or legal abortion or whatever. And the party moves on. And this happens on the Republican side as well. The activists put out ideas. A lot of them are unpopular and push away the median voter. Some of them stick. For example, in the 60s and 70s, there were liberals who wanted quotas, racial quotas in the workplace, in government, whatever. That proved to be deeply unpopular. The party moved on, doesn't talk about it at all anymore. So what you're describing is...
as what plagues the Democratic Party and what has created this trend, to me seems like something that happens over and over again in politics. And really, it's not so much this broad college-educated coalition that is even doing this. It's an activist class that makes up a vanishingly small minority of actual Americans.
What I would say is that there present currently are more voters in the Democratic coalition who are to the right, even of, let's say, the mainstream Democratic Party, not just the activist class. So when you, you know, kind of
uh, one of the things, uh, and I, I tend to focus on, you know, what are the big structural forces here? Cause it's very easy to devolve into, okay, uh, you know, a game of clue where it was, it was at Latin X in the billiard room, or was it, uh,
You know, defund the police in the kitchen that did it with the Hispanic voters in 2020, right? I think there's a broader structural force at play. And to that point, I should say, the data seems to suggest that it was more pandemic-related issues, the economy, and not shutting things down that appealed to Hispanic voters, as opposed to the BLM protests of the summer pushing people away. Exactly. But I do think that...
by the way, as in my own polling shows, the economic focus specifically among Hispanic voters is very high, much more so than the social issues. I think it's a myth, you know, particularly, I mean, some Republicans have convinced themselves that we just need to be more pro-life and churchgoing to appeal to the Hispanic voters. And that's not quite it. It really is a strong alignment on economic issues. But I think it's, to some extent, all of the above. But you just have many more
African-Americans, Hispanics who identify themselves, you know, self-identify as conservative ideologically and still vote Democratic than you do liberals on the other side who are still somehow voting Republican. That is not that virtually doesn't exist. So I think even if in the Democrats can present themselves in a more moderate, reasonable way,
tone, uh, that there is still this gravitational pull of ideological polarization that's happening. And it's happening because, you know, to a large degree, the racial, uh,
polarization that we saw kind of come about in the 20th century, a lot of elements of that are being dismantled in terms of you're seeing more suburbanization, you're seeing more people moving into integrated neighborhoods, you're seeing intermarriage, you're seeing more people not really identify as maybe one member of one racial group or another as families mix. What then happens is, you know, groups that initially started out
as identifiably with one party or another, usually the Democrats, tend to just migrate towards the center. And I think that's what you're seeing right now with Hispanic voters in particular, is just a migration towards something like a 50-50 split.
Yeah, I'm curious for your thoughts on all of this, because in your book, you talk a lot about on this cultural issue, liberals are doing it wrong on this cultural issue. Liberals are doing it wrong. And it seems like a lot of the the things that you point out in your book did get a lot of attention maybe a year or two ago. And the Democratic Party doesn't really talk that much about them anymore. Well, I think the.
The question is, what is a Democrat's brand on a given issue, not just what are the national politicians talk about? I mean, if you look at the Republican advantage on crime, on immigration issues like this, it isn't necessarily because Joe Biden is talking about defunding the police. It's not because Chuck Schumer is talking about having an open border. It's a question of what people believe.
observe in their lives, what they think is going on at the border, what they think is going on with crime, either in their community and communities near them, what they perceive to be the Democrats' approach to urban governance and law and order. You know, if you're going to have a law and order approach to crime, you have to say it. You don't just say fund the police, fund the police, fund the police. You actually implement
law and order. You get violent criminals off the street. You dissociate yourself from radical approaches to decriminalizing crime and decriminalizing shoplifting and so on. Democrats have not yet done that, and that's part of their brand. So the issue cannot be reduced to a question of what national politicians decide they should say or what a given politician runs on. It's a question of what voters perceive to be the case in terms of what's associated with the party.
In your book, you write about how Democrats should really focus on a New Deal approach to economics, something that I think we've heard a lot from both on the far left side of the party and the more moderate part of the party. And to some extent, now even Republicans are saying, hey, we should be more economic populist.
and that they should drop the social issues. I think you call for a truce in some sense on things like gender politics, sexuality politics, race, immigration, things like that. Because that's...
the economy is where Democrats are going to win. But I look at the dynamics today and elections that we've seen recently, and I say, hmm, Democrats seem to be winning on a social issue, that being abortion, and they seem to be losing on the economy, a.k.a. inflation that was in part created by those New Deal economic policies that were in the American Rescue Plan. And so I look at this dynamic and say, hmm,
Democrats aren't winning on the economy. They're losing on the economy. The median voter doesn't trust Democrats at all or Joe Biden on the issue of the economy, but they do trust Democrats on abortion, a social issue.
Well, I mean, it's true. I mean, I think actually you put your finger on the Democrats' plan for 2024. They're going to run on abortion rights and democracy. That's the plan. Because they know they got bupkis on economics, right? But they did what you said on economics, didn't they? Well, I would not say so, actually. As you pointed out, there was a big spike in inflation. Inflation is a killer. Now,
We could argue about whether and to what extent the spending the Biden administration was associated with was a prime driver of that. Perhaps not. There's a lot of other things going on there in terms of the supply chain problems, a lot of other things. But nevertheless, it is the case that as they were spending a bunch of money, inflation was going up. Then when you take a look at the composition of spending, what people understand, for example, about the Inflation Reduction Act,
I think a case can be made for industrial policy. I think it's good in many ways that Democrats are moving away from a basic neoliberal model. But that doesn't mean that, therefore, everything they're doing and all the money they're spending and all the places they're spending it are the right things to do. This is going to pay off. I think there's a lot of reasons to think that
Putting so much emphasis on a transition to renewables and electric vehicles, which is basically most of the dough in the Inflation Reduction Act, was maybe not a great idea, and it's maybe not going to pay off. And voters certainly feel at this point like it hasn't paid off. I don't think anybody...
seriously thinks the Inflation Reduction Act played a big role in either increasing or decreasing inflation. That's almost besides the point. Here I'm talking about... Well, I mean, they do believe it had a role. I mean, I think the weight of the evidence it had a role, probably not the major role.
But I think what people are mostly talking about are the policies that you would argue for, like a child tax credit, which is broadly benefiting the middle of the bell curve, things like that. But as Patrick pointed out, that's not what they did. That's not where they put their money, so to speak. No, no, no.
is where they put their money, and it did create inflation. So I'm curious from your perspective. Wait a minute, you just said it didn't create inflation. No, no, no. I said the Inflation Reduction Act did not create inflation. Okay, but you think the child tax credit did. Well, Federal Reserve Banks around the country essentially said that those policies had contributed to inflation to a significant degree, right? There was also a pandemic. Everything was caught up in the port of Los Angeles. Right.
But the economic populist policies seem to have gotten Democrats in trouble. Well, I'm a little confused whether you're saying that what the Democrats did or did not create inflation. I mean, I think it's a fair point. And if your argument is...
Intrinsically spending a lot of money on any kind of program, be it social or quote investment unquote, will create inflation on the level we saw in the first part of the Biden administration. That would be it would be a big difficulty. I personally don't believe that's the case. And I think that Democrats.
you know, can certainly move forward with a more social welfare-oriented program that actually provides benefits for people that they understand and appreciate and not produce that kind of inflation. I think it was unfortunate that at the time they were implementing these programs, the economy was just coming out of the big COVID recession. There were supply chain problems and so on, and there was an interaction effect, for sure. But if your argument is,
Democrats won't be able to pursue a New Deal program because it always creates inflation. Well, I don't agree with that, but if that was true, it would be a problem.
Well, what we see again and again is voters are not directly responding to economic policy. And, you know, it's not that they don't care about economic policy. They don't really care about the inputs, but they do care about the consequences of that policy. And they do care about their perception of the economic performance of the incumbent, which right now is they perceive as being quite poor and perceive as being quite poor in contrast to what they were seeing under the Trump administration.
I think while voters, I think, are very well versed in where the parties stand on social issues. Those are issues that are visceral. Abortion is an issue that's visceral. It's very clear to understand. People have a very, I think, it's not hard to come to a position on abortion.
abortion or gay marriage, it is hard for the average voter to come to a position and really understand exactly, well, what are the merits of different aspects of the child tax credit? And that's not what we're seeing voters vote on. People have noted this paradox of why did Trump make
All of these gains, despite not really actually advancing a populist economic policy. Part of this conversation, right, what caused inflation to the extent that he did advocate and did move forward with a populist economic policy. It was for added stimulus during the last year of his administration, which also created the inflation. But nobody really kind of
understands that or nobody really comprehends that because it's happened under Biden. But nonetheless, I think, you know, it really on the economic questions, it is a question of performance. And it's also, frankly, a question of vibes, right? I mean, you look back at somebody like
Bill Clinton, who, you know, was so natural in his ability to connect with the average person and their daily economic struggles in a way you did not see that from Hillary Clinton. I don't think you even, you know, with Joe Biden. Right. He's Scranton Joe. He has that image of the working class Democrat. I think that people don't see him as energetic enough. I think that the age issue is really for many voters important.
an energy issue. It's a vitality issue. Is it, can this guy stand up for me? And I don't think people are seeing that right now.
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Patrick, let's maybe begin with you. You're coming from a position of you want the Republican Party to keep the gains that it's made amongst this multiracial working class coalition, which is just the majority of the country, and expand on them.
How do you think the Republican Party should go about doing this? And then we'll ask how the Democratic Party should go about reversing that. I mean, I do think that, you know, sometimes it's luck, right, that has created and the circumstances that have created this coalition. But in terms of what are the levers that a political party can reasonably push to make sure this moves forward, I do think that, you know, to an extent,
the wind is at our back in terms of probably gradually rising support among Hispanic and other nonwhite voters, gradually sort of a slight unwinding perhaps of the huge Democratic margins and majority among black voters, which are really concentrated among especially among older voters. And as you see, generational replacement. So I think in that sense,
You know, the wind is at our back and it's steady state, right? And they're not, because it doesn't seem like in many ways policy-wise, they're doing very much to advance this realignment. Wait till your answer is...
I'm not sure. Right. I mean, I think it's actually I'm less certain of what they can do from a policy perspective because it doesn't seem like voters are reacting very much to the policies specifically that they're putting forward. Now, what I would say is you have to deliver votes.
for your coalition, right? So I think that it becomes very difficult and it's, you know, it becomes very difficult, I think, and hard for Republicans if they came back into power with a trifecta in 2025. And the first thing they did was, OK, we're going to reform entitlements now. I think they would
probably seriously endanger those gains. So it's really about can we avoid missteps, even though, yes, from a substantive policy angle, you do need to reform entitlements. It's just, you know, if it's agenda item number one in the same way that it was agenda item number one for George W. Bush when he came back after a big reelection, then they're, you know, going to, to some extent, lose control
the initiative with voters. Okay. Now it's time for me to pick on you. Your answer is nothing is just don't do entitlement reform. That's your only answer to how the Republican party can keep or grow gains with a multi-million. I think that continuing to, um, you know, advance, um, you know, look at, um,
You know, I think looking at the issues where specifically where Republicans are, you know, more in agreement with the mainstream of African-American, Hispanic opinion and continuing to, you know, have the economic focus that they had under the Trump, you know, at least his economic message and his economic focus does seem to have resonated. Anti-free trade.
anti-China, kind of like on-shoring. What are the areas where the Republican Party is currently out of step with majority public opinion of African-American and Hispanic voters where you could see it shifting?
You know, I think to an extent it's on the economic questions more so than on the social issues. I think abortion is an interesting outlier to an extent where you do have, I think particularly among Hispanics, right, I don't think they're as
conservative on the social issues. I think black voters over index more socially conservative relative to their partisanship on on some of those social issues. So I think I think certainly getting through this phase where, you know, states are working out what to do and that is a contested issue, I think, is is something that Republicans need to get through.
Okay. Rui, having heard all that, what do you think Democrats need to do to reverse these trends? Where to stalemate?
You know, we're fighting between the 50-yard lines of American politics. And one way I always think about it is, well, look, if the Trumpified Republican Party is so terrible, so awful, so beyond the pale, so against everything that's good and decent in the world, why can't the Democrats beat the heck out of them? And they can't at this point. I mean, because of a lot of the trends we've been discussing, there has been a ceiling on their support. We are fighting between the 50-yard lines. So...
Our broad diagnosis is Democrats have done best historically when they're the party of the common man and woman, of the ordinary American, the forgotten American, when they're a party that stands for national unity and national advance. And that's not the image the Democrats currently have. So the question is, how do they get there?
I think broadly speaking, they want to move to the center on cultural issues and more emphasize they're a party of unity and equal opportunity, of anti-discrimination, but not of equal outcomes. They're for a secure border. They're for peace.
Law and order, in the immortal words of Tony Blair, tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. There's a lot of ways Democrats could move to the center on cultural issues, and exactly how to do that, and exactly whether and how much does Sister Soldier moments, that's something we could debate.
Democrats have succeeded best when, as I say, they're the party of the common man and woman, and they're a party of getting things done, of building up America. So I think that would be a better approach than what they're currently associated with. Now, yes, people will say, but look at what Biden did. Isn't that what you had in mind? Well, some of it, yes, some of it, no, but...
I mean, my God, they've been talking for 40 years about how awful the neoliberal model is and how it's it's screwed the working class and people in communities all over the United States. You're not going to you're not going to fix that in three years or four years. It's going to take a long time. And to do that, you need a broad based model.
dominant coalition that can implement those policies over a significant period of time. And you just have to face that and you have to be very cognizant, therefore, what is the effect of your policies on ordinary people? And you would be very cognizant about being in the cultural wheelhouse of most voters. I noticed some differences in terms of how both of you thought your parties should pursue the working class. One was on economics and
Your argument, Patrick, was the Republican Party doesn't need to go fully maybe to the center or center left on economic populism in order to win working class voters, because the largest part of the multiracial working class coalition that Republicans are going to be able to make gains with going into the future is Latino voters who are
are skeptical of handouts and approve highly of the American dream, the general idea of the American dream, which is work hard and move up the ladder and don't take handouts. And Rui, I noticed that in your book more you talk about economic populism and
as a way for Democrats to reinvigorate advantages with the working class. So there seemed to be some divide. Like you thought that the party should go further to the left on economics. You thought Republican Party doesn't really need to go further to the left on economics.
You also said the Republican Party should talk more about race and not be worried about talking specifically about race and challenges in America based on race. And Ruri, you said the Democratic Party should not talk about race, basically. And obviously, maybe the two parties should do different things based on where they start from. Talk about this.
So I think over the overarching thing, right, that Republicans need to do is just be sane, right? I mean, in particularly when these, you know, you have, you know, governors like Glenn Youngkin, governors like Brian Kemp, who are
are perceived as, you know, being strong managers and strongly competent. And that image, right, is going to lift their – and we've seen that kind of reputation and image really lift their political fortunes across all demographic groups because they are perceived as handling the situation well.
You know, many aspects of the Trump years were very chaotic. And the MAGA Republicans, right, that the non-Trump MAGA candidates who don't quite have his same personal appeal to the working class, you know, are seen as more chaotic, less competent, and as a result, you know, get less support across the board.
There seems to be something special about Trump in getting marginal voters to turn out, especially marginal voters of color to turn out and vote actually for Trump. Like the most reliable black and Hispanic voters are more inclined to vote for Democrats. But Trump does something different. I don't know if it's his personality. You know, I think you describe it as almost an aggressiveness or whatever it may be.
Glenn Youngkin doesn't have that. Well, that's funny about Glenn Youngkin, right, is that he he recreated the Trump coalition in his race and added more suburban voters. And I think you're kind of seeing that even the down ballot elections in Virginia, you have these down ballot Republican candidates who are winning 98 percent in the southwest Virginia precincts. Right. That, you know, years and years ago were voting Democratic right in the Mark Warner era.
There was a big question, right, during the Trump years, right? Could you swap out another Republican and they would still reap the structural benefits of the Trump coalition? I think we've seen when Republicans are perceived as competent, strong managers, it's
that they do get the vast majority of the benefit, even though I do think, yes, structural education polarization will probably go down if Donald, if and when Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee. Right. Um, but I think that will primarily go down because they win back some suburban voters rather than, uh,
losing very much margin among this multiracial populist coalition. But I think we'll also have to see because it's hard to compare off-year elections to general elections. Yeah, we haven't had a presidential election without Trump. Right, exactly. For quite a while. Yeah, I mean, I think what America's thirsty for is a common sense, normie voter party. That's what I think. And I think that
You know, no disrespect to my comrade to the left here, but I think the Republican Party is pretty far away from it. And a lot of it has to do with Trump and the influence of the people who support him within the party. So I think Democrats have an opportunity to be that common sense normie voter party. And if they could, I think that is what people are looking for.
And I think there is an opening there for Democrats because I think, frankly, Republicans are going to have a hard time escaping the gravitational pull of Trump for quite a while. Are you both arguing that the Republican Party and Democratic Party should become the same party?
They can't become the same, but I think it would be terrible if both parties competed for the center of American politics. I think that would be great. Well, I largely agree with that, but I think it's more likely to happen and already has happened on economics when you actually look at the votes in the House and the actual outcomes, right, of these processes. We just saw it, right, where, you know, you have to keep the government running.
You have to keep the government running with spending bills that are roughly the same as what they were last year. And, you know, there's a lot of posturing, a lot of noise, a lot of drama around that. But at the end of the day, you're going to have a Republican speaker who is going to press forward on the same sorts of roughly the same thing that a Speaker Jeffries or a Speaker Pelosi would do in terms of. So I think the parties have converged.
When you look at the COVID spending, there was, you know, when there is an actual pressing deadline or emergency, you know, the parties are much more similar in philosophy and outcome on the economy. And you would argue to an extent under Trump, you know, Trump made that.
made that, you know, whereas before, right, with a Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney-style economic agenda, there was a real clear contrast on the economy, one that did not benefit, largely did not benefit Republicans. On the social issues, I think they'll continue to remain divided.
because partisans have sorted themselves, right, naturally into voters have kind of sorted themselves around those issues. So it's going to continue to make sense for the parties to service those constituencies. Yeah, I think the convergence in economics is, you know, obviously there's a long way to go. But I mean, Trump really did blow that up. He blew up the Republican Party's commitment to free trade, to orthodox, you know, free market economics, right?
The government is best that governs least. So I think Republicans are sorting that out. There's still a lot of people in the Republican Party who want to go back to the way things used to be. But I think that ship has sailed. And I think Republicans are now in a space where they're trying to figure out their version of post neoliberal economics, just like the Democrats are trying to figure out their version of post neoliberal economics.
But I don't think there's any going back to the previous kind of debate between, you know, government and no government.
So I'd asked you to come at this from the perspective of this is what the parties can do to be majority coalitions. But there may well be people listening who think, well, that's not the only goal of politics to just win as many people as possible. Right. I mean, you look at what's happening in Argentina right now and it's like, OK, you just give everybody money every so often and you create a disaster with inflation. But maybe you win an election in the near term.
There are probably folks on the left listening who say, OK, you may not think that the interventions needed to address climate change are popular, but they're really important. And there may be conservatives on the right listening saying, well, you're saying Republicans shouldn't pursue entitlement reform. Well, then you're asking for the country to, with its eyes wide open to the problem, go bankrupt.
You're both describing situations that may be politically feasible or politically appealing in the short term, but may not actually address the challenges that the parties see in the long term and the reason they're frankly our parties to begin with.
I mean, that's always the tension in the conundrum, right? Doing what is right in the short term to win an election and what is right on a longer time horizon. You know, my position would not be don't do anything about Social Security, but it is something where if you're going to do it
Try to do it with bipartisan support. And it partly depends on, you know, I would say it partly depends on Democrats, right, being willing partners in that. I mean, we're going to have a stronger solution to the entitlement crisis if it's something that, you know, both parties can agree on. The question is, in Congress, nothing really gets done without a pressing deadline. And that pressing deadline is a few years away.
As chaotic as that seems, I think that's the reality of how anything is going to happen is that, you know, when there is a crisis, you know, for long stretches of time, nothing happens. And then COVID happens. And it's kind of like the situation where, you know, there are some weeks where decades happen, right? The old Lenin quotes. And all of a sudden, all these things get done. So I think that, you know, with those longer term challenges, I think that's more than likely what's going to happen.
Well, a distinction that John Judas and I make, and we wrote a piece on this, where we make a distinction between good radicalism and bad radicalism, because this is a response we've gotten from some people about our book. Oh, you know, you say Democrats should move to the center and this and that. But, you know, some of these radical ideas, you know, they will become common, the conventional wisdom 30 years hence. And they're things that must be done.
Our view is there's good radicalism and bad radicalism. And Social Security and the New Deal, originally the New Deal was quite radical. I would have if you advocated in the 1920s, the civil rights movement.
laws were quite radical at some times. But that doesn't mean everything people come up with on the left is like a good idea. You know, mandating equal outcomes is not a good idea. It's pretty radical, but it's not a good idea. Not every radical idea is like, you know, gay marriage. Not every radical idea is like the civil rights movement. Not every radical idea is like ending slavery. Not every radical idea is like the New Deal. Some radical ideas are just bad. Right.
But how do you know in the moment which is which? Well, that's when you've got to make your judgments, right? That's where political parties have to decide what they stand for and what they don't stand for. And they shouldn't stand for something simply because it's radical. That makes no sense whatsoever. I would imagine that Democrats wouldn't say they stand for a conversion to clean energy because it's radical. They stand for it because they think it's necessary.
Well, this necessary because of what? Is it because if we don't do X within 10 years, the planet's going to be fried? That's an empirical claim, and I don't think it's right. So, you know, that's why a radical idea about how fast you can make a transition to clean energy is not necessarily a good idea. Obviously, climate change is a problem.
It will have to be dealt with. The question is, what's feasible? What can be done and what will happen if we don't take the most radical action immediately? And I think that's where political parties have to make a judgment about what is true and what is not true. But they simply shouldn't do something because it's radical. I mean, the idea that it's a problem that can be solved, fine. The idea that it must be solved in a certain kind of way, not necessarily fine. I also think that it's valid for political parties to say, make a trade, right? I mean, that's what was done with civil rights is we're going to cut off
off, the Democrats did with civil rights, is we're going to cut off the southern wing of our party. And, you know, hopefully, and then in turn, we will gain a lot of Black voters, right? And obviously, they paid a political price for that. And on principle, you know, they made a decision, but it took a while for that to work out. Who do you think is in a, Republicans or Democrats, who do you think is in a better position today to win majorities going forward?
Well, I vote for Democrats. Okay. But it's not as easy a choice as it once was. Well, you're referring to the emerging Democratic coalition or majority. If the Democrats had retained what we called in that book 20 years ago, a sort of progressive centrism, I think they would be in better shape. But I think now, given the problems that have occurred in the party and the way the coalitions have shifted and the influence of
College educated liberal contingent and the shadow party as we discuss in our book. I think you know there are barriers They're real ceilings to how good they can do unless they they start changing things But I do think that compared to the Trumpified Republican Party probably I give them the edge in terms of being able to adjust
I think we're at an inflection point where it was the Democrats and it may start to be the Republicans, you know, particularly if, alas, right. But, you know, if particularly this New York Times-Siena poll actually were to come true, you know, and that is obviously a long way off.
But, Rui, in some sense, you know, you wrote the emerging Democratic majority. And, you know, I think you've talked about all the ways that it didn't come true. But in some sense, it has come true in that the Democrats have won seven out of the last eight elections in the popular vote. But the problem is, you know, we don't elect presidents by popular vote. And sort of this Republican coalition is more
you know, is more electorally efficient as it becomes more working class, you win more states. Nor do we elect senators, representatives or state legislators on the basis of the nationwide popular vote. So I do think that that is absolutely been the present, you know, situation that we find ourselves in. Republicans, you know, win by, you know, accident of the electoral college every every now and again. Sure. But
I do think that particularly if you were to see a substantial realignment of nonwhite voters, I think Republicans would be back to parity. I think the prior would be a fully tied popular vote heading into heading into future presidential elections.
I've been speaking with Patrick Ruffini, the author of Party of the People, and Ruud Teixeira, the author of Where Have All the Democrats Gone? Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. It's a very lively discussion. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Chortavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If
If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Or you can tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.
