Anti-MAGA Insights

0:00It's the Bryan Lair Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. So are you ready for some political contradictions that might make your head explode? They come from Sarah Longwell, founder and publisher of the Bullwork, host of the Focus Group podcast and author of the new book How to Eat an Elephant, one voter at a time. She'll join us in a minute. Her book is based on what she's learned after 400 Focus Groups she's conducted in the years since Trump was elected and she shifted from Republicanism to what has sometimes been called Never Trump Republicanism. In that spirit she founded the Bullwork which now describes itself not in terms of Trump but as committed to defending liberal democracy. Some of her recent Bullwork newsletter headlines include want to understand why Tallahuree can win. Listen to these Texas Trump voters. The three issues souring

1:04Trump voters on Trump. Most Trump scandals don't bother his voters. These are the exceptions. We'll ask her about those. One or one that's new this morning, furious Republicans are finally breaking with a weakened Trump. Her book How to Eat an Elephant is kind of a guide based on all these focus groups on how to defeat Trumpism. But just as the tease about these contradictions that she says any successful candidate will have to confront. She found voters who lament our deep political divisions while raging about their political enemies. Ones who believe in grace, they say grace, but cut their Trump brother out of their life forever. Or they're married to an immigrant but voted for the guy who wants to deport millions of people with their wife's same immigration status. Or they want to lower the debt and hate the government but want the government to spend more to help them in their communities. Or their pro life but believe in a woman's right to choose. Those who are on the book let's start there. Sarah Longwell, hi. Welcome back to WNYC. Oh hey thanks for having me.

2:09First tell everybody about your focus groups. Were these done with all voters, wing voters, who in particular? Well I think it's probably the largest qualitative data set that's happened in the Trump era. And we talked everybody. Now when I do a focus group though, we always section them off by some qualities. Sometimes it is education. We'll do college educated Trump voters or versus non college educated Trump voters. We'll do women versus men. We'll do young people versus old people. We'll do black voters. We'll do Hispanic voters. And so there's always and tons of swing voters. I would say for me in particular because I started doing focus groups trying to figure out both why Trump won and how we could defeat him in the future. I did focus mostly, although again, like I said, we talked to everybody but I would say maybe half of the groups really focus on these swingier types of voters. But swing voters come in a lot of different sizes. You know, I think Hispanics are very swingy voters. Young people are swingy voters because they

3:13don't really have their minds completely made up yet. You've got people who are shifting between the two parties. You've got people like me, you're sort of college educated suburban voters who used to vote for Mitt Romney and John McCain, who now absolutely won't vote for Democrats. They live in the box county. A lot of the big suburbs of cities. But the trade there was that Republicans got a lot more non-college working class voters of old demographics, more non-college working class black voters, Hispanic voters. And so there's a lot of different types of swing voters. And I lay them out. There's a chapter in the book called Anatomy of a Swing Voter. And I've really tried to figure out what makes that group tick. And how do you do persuasion with that group? Because you know, another category of swing voter are what people often call low information voters, which just means people who aren't particularly tapped into politics until it's time to vote. And so how do you reach people like that? And so that's been my research over the years.

4:15Yeah. So you've identified some groups that voted for Trump in 2024, who might switch to the right Democrat like Joe Rogan fans or people who kind of hate everyone in politics. Also young voters and Hispanic voters, some of whom are traditionally democratic and they might be again, where would you start to answer your own question as to, you know, who the swing voters are and how to talk to them? Well, going into a midterm is interesting, because a midterm electorate is very different from a general election electorate. So in the midterm, a lot of those non-college working class voters are much less likely to vote. And so Democrats actually end up having more of a structural advantage with a lot of those college educated suburban voters who absolutely do vote. The other thing about, and this is really true in this upcoming, you know, the 2026 elections, people are furious about the economy. They were furious with Joe Biden about the economy. And so for a lot of these voters, especially young voters, Hispanic voters,

5:22they were people who said, I am not going to vote for Kamala Harris because I hate Joe Biden's economy and she's just going to be more of the same. I liked Donald Trump's first term economy before COVID. And so I'm going to let give him another shot. Those same people were sort of the hold your nose vote for Trump over the economy people. Those people are furious and they are moving back very quickly. So like Hispanic voters, the number of them who have now, like his approval rating with Hispanic voters is just absolutely in the toilet for a lack of a better phrase. Same with young voters, both young voters and Hispanic voters have moved really quickly away from Donald Trump and sort of back to Democrats. And then also, when we were talking about Joe Rogan or the sort of manosphere, I call them the red-pilled voters who really hate a lot of the woke stuff. And then also they really voted for Trump because he promised no new wars, no stupid wars in the Middle East. And those people feel very betrayed by Trump on the war in Iran. And so I think

6:25that's why you're seeing Democrats see such good numbers going into 2026. In the little excerpt from your book in the Atlantic, you really focused on the voters with those contradictions. Or you put them up near the top of the article. Those ones that I read out in the intro. Do you want to pick one or two from the list that I read out and say what you think they mean? Because it's really interesting to go to your weird point of how people are wild, the weird salad full of contradictions as you put it. But pick one or two and talk about how it actually relates to how either party appeals to swing voters. Yeah, so first I just want to say part of what happens is when people come on, especially experts, and they talk about politics and demographics and they're trying to break it down and make it understandable. It often just misses the fact that people are incredibly messy and funny and nonlinear.

7:27And that is why I think people who are really politically obsessed and aware, they have the same kind of sickness that I do where they're tracking politics all the time. They listen to these voters and go, what are they even talking about? What does it mean when somebody says, I'm one pro life, but I believe in a woman's right to choose? And the first time I heard that in a focus group, I was like, that doesn't make sense. And then I heard it over and over and over again. And it was really coming from a lot of like 60-year-old women who would say for themselves, they were pro-life. They would never choose to have an abortion, whether it was for faith reasons or whatever. Then, but they didn't want the right taken away. They believed that women should have that right there. They believed that it should remain legal. And I think that actually the reason that when you look at the numbers, they don't identify as pro-choice themselves, but they do not want the law, the abortion laws overturned. And that was a pretty big segment of voters. The other thing,

8:35I mean, and this isn't all the groups. And it's one of my favorite phenomena because people do, when you say, you know, how do you think things are going in the country, one of the first things you get back from people when they say bad, which is what most people say, is we're just so divided, we hate each other. It's like a powder keg. I just feel like we're going to be in a civil war soon. And they really do lament those political divisions. It feels icky to them. The problem is that then you'll get into the focus group. And five minutes later, that same person is saying, it's all those liberals fault about this, that, and the other, and vice versa. And so people sort of lament the divisions while very much participating in the divisions. And I think that's one that for people listening, you can sort of identify with. You say, yeah, I don't love it. It doesn't feel good, but also you're very mad at the political opposition for the way they behave. But what is a politician supposed to do with that? Kader to people's desire to have a less polarized

9:35country or a cater to the things that they're mad about. Because I think you also write that Democrats want from their leaders right now, not so much policy change as a lot more fight. And at the same time, those might be some of the same people who say, oh, we're too polarized and I hate that. Yeah, and this is an interesting thing that I hear a lot, which is Democrats are tired. And this is direct, a direct quote that I hear a version of all the time. I'm tired of bringing a pillow to a gunfight. And what they mean is we feel like Republicans fight harder than our people do. We feel like Republicans, you know, they break the rules. They do narrative dominance. They've got their own media ecosystem. Their politicians go out and lie and do all this stuff. Like, why are we just sitting back and doing nothing? I hear Democrats express this frustration. They express it about Democratic leaders. But they also don't want to be a mirror image of Trump.

10:40Like, they don't actually want their politicians to behave like Trump. They don't want their politicians to lie the way Trump and Republicans do. Like, they don't want to have politicians who say elections are stolen. What they do want is somebody who fights both pushes back loudly and demonstrably on what Democrat, I'm sorry, on what Republicans are doing, what Trump is doing, which they feel there's not enough of. But also somebody who fights for something, for them. They feel like, you know, Democrats kind of don't have an affirmative plan for how they want to run the country. And they feel like Republicans are much better at saying, here's what we're against. Here's what we're against. Here's what we're going to do. Here's what we're going to do. You know, Trump saying, I'm going to build a wall. And it's like Democrats don't want a wall or something sort of silly, but they do want bold ideas that they feel like they can attach to and get behind. But doesn't policy also matter? Like, Mungani won on three identifiable slogans.

11:42I mean, not just on these, you know, these items, but he had this identifiable freeze the rant fast free buses, universal childcare. Abdul El Sayyad and Michigan, you know, he's got the slogan, right? Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all. I mean, these are policy items. They are policy items, however. So let me, I'm going to give you an example from Trump. So I mentioned the wall. When Trump talked about the wall, he's not built the wall. Like, and voters have never punished him for not building the wall, despite the fact that it was the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign. And that is because voters care less about the bespoke policy, like the exact thing you're going to do. What they liked about the wall was it meant Trump was going to take immigration seriously. And that's what they wanted. Like, they did want, they didn't care about the nitty-gritty policy. Mungani is exactly the same way. It's not that people are like, I definitely

12:43think, you know, these public grocery stores or the transportation. It was that he was completely focused on, hey, New York is on an, an unaffordable place to live, which is the thing that they feel. And so it was less about the exact policy and much more about, directionally, he was focusing on the things that they cared about. Listeners, any questions or stories about yourself. Maybe you heard some of those political contradictions that she writes about that I ticked off in the intro. And you thought, yeah, that sounds like me. Tell your own story or ask Sarah Longwell a question. Sarah Longwell founder and publisher of the Bullwark, host of the Focus Group podcast with these 400 Focus Groups that she's run since Trump was elected. And now the author of the brand new book, How to Eat an Elephant, One Voter at a Time. 212-433-WNYC call or text 212-433-9692. By the way,

13:47I guess you yourself are an example of some of these contradictions, right? Because you've got started as a young gay Republican activist who found yourself on a book tour promoting Senator Rick Santorum's anti-gay marriage book. What? So maybe talk about your own history and how it's informed you're thinking professionally. Yeah, so I grew up in a really small town in central Pennsylvania that was very much culturally conservative. And but then I went to private school. I had to take a van you know an hour away, but I was very lucky. I got to go to this school in Harrisburg. And I think that you know I was at some point I sort of you know realized I was gay. And so I always felt like I held some of these contradictions. But what happened with Rick Santorum was not that I promoted his point exactly what happened was I worked for this think tank that I started working at right after college in Delaware. And it published Rick Santorum's book. And so I became like the junior

14:52person. I was 24 years old. It was the same year that Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage. So I was in the process of coming out when I sort of got assigned to Rick Santorum to travel with him as he promoted his book. And it was really formative for me because I watched I I was with him when he went on the daily show and I was standing in the wings. And I watched John Stewart take his arguments apart like brick by brick. And I realized like oh I could do that. And to me you know it's one of the reasons I talk about young people being swingier in the way that they think about things. Look I was just like a John McCain Republican kind of a squish. I didn't like bush that much. I always kind of liked John McCain. And he John McCain came on the scene exactly at the time when I was in college. And then as a senior in college 9-11 happened. And so I had gone to work for this conservative think tank sort of animated by some of that only to have these social issues really be the focus. And so I quickly learned that that was

15:56not what I wanted to be working on not what I wanted to be doing. But it was so good for me because it forced me to say hey I'm always going to be out. And also I'm going to get involved in actively helping the gay marriage rights as well as repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell. And so I joined log cabin Republicans young conservatives for the freedom to marry. I basically did everything that I could do to provide a sort of center right voice of support for gay marriage. Listen to rights. Why should any Democrat trust you? If the Republican Party becomes the party of Mitt Romney again, that's you, right? What do you say to that listener? I mean first of all I say the Republican Party is never going back because the voters don't want it back. That was sort of one of my early realizations when I started doing the focus groups, which was the things that animated me like my conservative interest was I wanted to get rid of the national debt. I was really interested

16:56in education reform policy. And that is not what Republican voters wanted like listening to Republican voters. And this is you know it was sort of knocked my socks off when I first started listening to them. I did think people and I just I realized that I had spent too much time at sort of think tank world and academic conservatism versus the way average Americans were relating to the political parties because they were not there for you know free markets, personal responsibility, and you know American leadership in the world. And that was something that was interesting to me. But so the party is not going back, but also I would just say as a personal matter. The watching Republicans like Marco Rubio, like Nikki Haley, all of them sort of betray everything that I was ever told, right? Everything that was said that mattered to me as

17:57that was a conservative principle, the rule of law, the Constitution. I mean I'm just swimming in pocket constitutions because I every conservative organization would mail them to you. Like this is not a party that cares about the Constitution now. And so I don't have any interest in going back, but you know the thing that I get this question a lot about should people trust me because I was a former Republican and you know this is not a book about Sarah Longwell's personal political preferences because I too am a weird salad. Like if you left politics up to me, I would be much less interested in a lot of the populist economic stuff that I think voters are interested and I would be much more interested in more immigration. Like I am somebody who believes that immigration is a revitalizing strength and like really is an economic boon for us and voters are exactly the opposite. And so this book is about what voters say because voters, the majority of them are very clear that they want a closed border. They want an orderly immigration process and that that

19:01makes sense, right? People like order. They like fairness and so they want people to not jump the line is how they talk about it. You know they want people of the line everybody uses is come the right way. But Americans really like the populist economics. Like they do want and this is why I think Democrats running on universal health care. Like I sort of think that's an idea whose time has come for voters. They want that and they they like the social safety net and their frustration with the wars and a lot of that stuff comes down to hey, like this is why America first was such a good slogan. Even though I know and probably a lot of your listeners know it's rooted in a kind of racist 1930s way of thinking. But the way that Americans hear it is very different. They hear, oh you're going to prioritize me the American like somebody in this country and that's what they like. And so you know you don't have to take my word for it but I went and listened to thousands and thousands and thousands of voters because I didn't understand how Donald Trump happened and I

20:05wanted to primary him. That was my initial objective. And I learned so much. Well I'm just going to say that this book is about what I learned from listening to voters not about my personal politics. Your reference to Republicans lying before touched accord one listener says Democrats have not taken any initiative to call out Republicans for lying but another listener writes Sarah Longwell is being insulting not fair. She said lying like Republicans as if Democrats don't lie Politifack check Hillary bill and Biden. So there's that. And let me get one call in for you before we run out of time. Ada in Bay Ridge you're on WNYC with Sarah Longwell from the Bullwork Hello. Hi. Yeah so I'm a big fan of Bullwork. I've been listening since I had discovered it through you Brian when you did the shows with Charlie Sykes. And I have my JBL is always right sticker on my water bottle. I was just thinking like the last I could visit about policing like that there's no like

21:10in the Bay Ridge between five right there's like there's like there's like oh boy Ada I think we can't do it I think your your phone is just not letting us understand enough but let me try Edmund and Westchester who I think might be making a similar point Edmund we've got about 30 seconds for you hey there. Hi I also have a big fan and just to follow your podcast. The questions around the complexity of the democratic position it's a more nuanced it also wants to build it's just inherently a more difficult argument to make in a way that rallies support in a unified way. So maybe maybe the the lines problem is us but I think enough of this question got through there which was don't Democrats tend to take more complicated positions on issues and if you have those how do you fight fight you know slogans like there are only two

22:12genders or whatever it is. Yeah so here this is really what I tackle in the book this is exactly the thing that I tackle which is I actually don't think it has to be so complicated and that voters really want two big things they want to be told they're going to be safe right they're personal safety and they want their material well-being to be good and improving and so and when I say material well-being that encompasses a lot of issues right it's like gas prices it's housing and affordability it's your health care it's your ability to get a job keep a job have up-ord mobility all of that stuff that is the number one thing voters care about it sounds boring it sounds stupid but like voters care about their personal well-being and so Democrats should talk about that and that is a thing that applies to everybody Democrats have this desire to sort of break everybody up into these little groups it's like and you get a policy and you get a policy instead

23:12those big picture economic policies I think Democrats could really thrive by just focusing on like we're here for you and right now there's a huge contrast in all the corruption on the Republican side that Democrats can really contrast themselves with oh that's just what I was going to ask you to close with your article most Trump scandals don't bother his voters these are the exceptions give us 30 seconds on that then we're out of time well this contrast piece is really important a lot of voters will forgive Trump's excesses narcissistic pursuits of like a ballroom and an arch and the reflecting pool and also all the crypto schemes and everything else as long as they're getting better their lives are getting better they're doing better and they're not and so the contrast right now if Trump is focused on the wrong things his family is corrupt while I'm getting poor groceries are still expensive they're making money on this war while my gas prices are going up that is the huge opportunity for Democrats to go on offense Sarah Longwell is founder and publisher

24:16of the bulwark host of the focus group podcast and now the author of how to eat an elephant one voter at a time thank you so much for sharing it with us oh thanks for having me w-n-y-c's journalism and storytelling is heard by millions of passionate listeners sponsors of our programming gain our listeners attention and their respect learn about how your organization can support w-n-y-c and w-n-y-c studios at sponsorship.wn-y-c.org