FiresideND, Part 11: Remaining Vigilant, What to Watch for in the Days Ahead

Listen in to conversations between scholars, activists, faith leaders, and political strategists at this perilous moment in the history of American democracy as they reflect on the 2024 election from how we got here to what to watch for in the days ahead.

Remaining Vigilant Speakers:

• Rachel Brown, Founder and Executive Director of Over Zero
• Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University
• Lilliana Mason, SNF Angora Institute Associate Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins
• Elizabeth Neumann, Department of Homeland Security (former)
• Matthew D. Taylor, Protestant Scholar, Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies

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Transcript

Paul Blaschko: 0:06

Welcome to Fireside ND, the podcast from Think ND that brings the experience and expertise of Notre Dame to you whenever, wherever. From STEM to art, from religion to health. Listen and learn with Notre Dame on the go.

1: 0:19

On behalf of the Center for Philosophy of Religion, my colleague Mike Ray and I would like to welcome you all to this 2024 election postmortem event. Mike and I are philosophers here at the University of Notre Dame, and together we direct the Center. A little bit about the Center. For over 45 years, the Center for Philosophy of Religion has been bringing together scholars to make progress understanding difficult and important questions about God. In recent years, much of our work has been interdisciplinary, pulling in not only philosophers from various subfields and traditions, but also theologians, English scholars. psychologists, historians, and others. This year, happily, is no exception. Our research theme for the year is religion and democracy, and we are so honored and excited to have with us, as one of five in residence fellows at the Center, Kristen Kobus Dumais, Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin College, Calvin University, excuse me. I'll have the honor of introducing Kristen a little bit more fully, for our second speaking panel later this morning. but this event is Kristen's brainchild, and it never would have happened without her. Let's take a moment to thank Kristen this morning.

2: 1:43

Kristen has pulled together an incredible group of scholars, activists, and faith leaders who will be speaking with us over the course of three panels today to try to understand this particular moment in history. The panels are organized roughly chronologically. First we'll focus on understanding what just happened. Second, we'll talk about what we see happening now and what to watch for in the days ahead. Finally, coming back in the afternoon, we'll think about planning for the future. As we get ready for our first panel, we'd like to take a moment also to thank our center's administrative assistant, Joyce Zuroski, and, our academic outreach strategist, Meg Schmidt Pollack, who have put in an incredible amount of work behind the scenes with working with Kristen to make this day possible. Alright,

1: 2:30

we'd also like to thank all of you for coming out in the midst of a busy holiday season, end of semester season, to be here and be part of this conversation. and now I turn things back over to my colleague, Mike Ray, who will be moderating our first panel of the morning and we'll go ahead and bring up our panelists. Thanks.

2: 2:50

While they come up, I'll say, we'll probably repeat this later, but the format is each panelist will have about 10 minutes to speak, then there will be about 25 to 35 minutes of moderated Q& A with the invited guests who are sitting in the reserved sections, and then there will be 15 to 25 minutes of just open Q& A from anybody, and there will be someone in each session blocking the room with a microphone. So I'm going to be introducing our panelists in order, and they are seated in the order in which they will speak. David Campbell is the Paki J. D. Professor of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame, and the Director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative. His research focuses on civic and political engagement with particular attention to religion and young people. His most recent book, Secular Surge, A New Fault Line in American Politics, received the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. In addition to his many scholarly publications, he has also been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post. Wall Street Journal, and every political scientist's dream, Cosmopolitan. Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, P R R I. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, as well as White Too Long. The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award. He is frequently featured in major national media, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Christopher Sebastian Parker UC Santa Barbara, where he specializes in American politics, identity, race, ethnicity, and public opinion. His most recent book, Change They Can't Believe In, The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America, won the American Political Science Association's award for the best book in race, ethnicity, and politics. His work has also appeared or been featured in the New York Times, FiveThirtyEight. com, the Washington Post, and CNN. com. And he has appeared on MSNBC, PBS, C SPAN, and the History Channel. Catherine Stewart is a journalist who has been covering religious nationalism and the assault on American democracy for over 15 years. Her latest book, The Power Worshippers, Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, was awarded first place for excellence in non fiction by the Religion News Association, as Forkosh Award. Stuart writes for the New York Times Opinion, New Republic, and many others, and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. Finally, Carrie Kessel is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. She specializes in the study of contemporary Chinese and Russian politics, authoritarianism, and religion in politics. She is the author of Religion and Authoritarianism, Cooperation, Conflict, Cooperation and Conflict, and she has testified before the Congressional Executive, Executive Commission on China. Let's welcome our five speakers.

4: 6:04

Well, folks, this is a historic day. Never before have I ever been to an academic conference that started early. It's astounding. There's no way anyone is gonna remember my name because there's so many people on the, on the panel, but I'm the guy who, you may recall in the introductions, in addition to being a professor and writing stuff, and I'm, I'm the Cosmo guy, which is absolutely true. I also direct the, democracy initiative here at Notre Dame, so I'm going to take just a few seconds of my time and plug. This democracy initiative, this is a university wide effort for Notre Dame to demonstrate its commitment to the study of democracy, the promotion of democracy, the strengthening of it, both here in the United States and abroad. And if there's any issue where we might expect Notre Dame would have a voice that we hope the rest of the country and the world will listen to. It's on the question of faith and religion and how it relates to democracy. So I was absolutely thrilled to see this event come together and I'm grateful for all of those involved in, in organizing it. And I'm grateful to see, again, such a large crowd here today. We are tasked on this panel and talking about the 2024 election because we just can't stop talking about this election. And I am a card carrying political scientist. And so if we ask the question, what happened, I do feel obligated to note that from a political science perspective, we should not be surprised by the outcome of the 2024 presidential election in the United States. you can consider Kamala Harris as an incumbent. She was the vice president after all, and all around the world and every liberal democracy that has held an election this year, and that is many of them. the governing party has lost ground. They haven't always lost power, but they've lost ground. In fact, by that standard, the performance of the Democrats in the 2024 election, again, compared to other incumbent parties around the world, was actually pretty good. And there are some easy explanations for that. here in the United States, as around the world, there's a lot of economic anxiety. we know that in the United States, those economic indicators were actually a little stronger than they were in the rest of the world. But if you are somebody who is dealing with inflation, you don't care about the inflation rate. In France, you care about the price of milk at your grocery store. And, we just know historically that when, there's a perception, whatever the reality, that the economy is in poor shape and in particular when inflation is high, incumbent parties do poorly. So I could end my remarks there and say, that explains the election. But I'm going to go a little bit further, and note that, while we are here today, I think primarily to talk about the role of religion and faith and those sorts of issues as they pertain to American politics and our democratic system, it is interesting to me that if you look at the news coverage, all of the chattering classes around the election, There has really not been a lot of focus on religion as a theme, at least compared to other elections. I'm old enough to remember the 2004 election, the re election of George W. Bush. There was a lot of talk about religion in that election. There was a lot of talk in 2008 when Barack Obama first ran, etc, etc. But there wasn't a whole lot this time around, and we're gonna see in a few minutes some data from Robbie Jones, and he can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that for the most part, The major religious groups that we pay attention to when we're analyzing election returns voted pretty much in 2024 as they did in 2020, as they did in 2016. That is, we didn't see a dramatic change. Changes in other groups, certainly, and that's where we've, you know, had our attention drawn. Trump's growth and support among, demographics has come as a surprise to some people. But there really hasn't been that much focus on religious groups. And I'd like to suggest to you that the fact that that's not a story is itself a story. Because it tells us something about the calcification of the religious coalitions. I'm going to add the word secular as well. The secular coal and religious coalitions that you find. in the American party system today. I don't need to, I think, tell this crowd that over the last generation or two, we've seen the growth of the religious right in the United States. It's worth noting that with the rise of the religious right, we've also seen a growth in religious non affiliation. So what? It's often referred to as the growth of the nuns. This is where I'm obligated to make the Notre Dame joke that we don't mean the N U N kind of nun, the N O N E kind of nun. You do not have to laugh. That is not even really a joke anymore, but we're sort of stuck with this clunky term, the nuns, referring to people with no religious affiliation. So the religious right emerges. We see the growth of the nuns. People like myself have pointed out maybe those two things are connected and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that they are, that at least some of those nuns became nuns. That is, they stopped thinking of themselves as a Presbyterian or a Catholic or a Mormon or whatever because to them, religion meant not just politics, but conservative politics. So the Republican Party. And that's been the story. that we've seen unfold over the last generation or so. But at the same time, I would suggest that the religious right, as we have known it as a movement, has actually undergone quite a significant change in that it is a lot less about being religious, and it is a lot more about being right, or right wing. In that, whatever you may have thought of the early leaders of the religious right, they were actually religious. They actually were often ministers or pastors themselves, and certainly they had some evidence of being literate in scripture. They actually did base their arguments, whether you agreed with them or not, on their faith. Today what I hear from many folks that are associated with that same sort of movement is less any sort of serious religious content and more an assertion that to be American is to be Christian and maybe more specifically to be a Republican is to be Christian or perhaps evangelical or some combination of those two. So we've seen a removal of the religious content from the religious right and in its place. This sense of nationalism and partisanship, which I suspect will be a common theme in our conversation today. On the other side, on the left, where I mentioned we've seen the growth of the nuns, this religious non affiliation. At the same time, we're also seeing a, growth or at least a establishment of what my co authors and I have called a secularist population. It's one thing to turn away from religion, to say, well, I'm not a Presbyterian anymore. And it's quite another to go from saying, I'm not a Presbyterian, I'm not a Lutheran, I'm not a Catholic, to instead embracing an affirmative secular worldview. That population has also been growing, and they are almost exclusively found. So we're seeing this change on both the right and the left that presents both challenges and opportunities for the parties as they exist today. It is tempting, given what I've just described, to suggest that the United States is moving toward, or perhaps even has, what in Europe we might call a confessional party system, where you have parties that are religious in nature and you have parties that are secular in nature. But that's not quite accurate, and this is where those on the left, and specifically in the Democratic Party, have a challenge ahead of them. Because even though on the left we've seen not only the growth of the nuns but also this growth of an actively secularist population, they exist in a coalition with another group of voters who are sincerely religious in a way that those religious nationalists on the right I would argue are not. And, of course, I'm referring to the fact that the Democratic Party has, at its base, at its core, a very large number of African American and a slightly smaller number of Latino Americans who are very religiously involved, and that lines up with their politics on the left and not on the right. And I would suggest that, thus far, the Democratic Party has not really figured out how to combine those two wings, that growing secularist base that, frankly, they almost never talk about, And the fact that within that very same party, within that very same coalition, you have quite a fervently religious group. And they agree on a lot of policies, not on everything. They don't necessarily agree on how things are framed and stated and whatnot. But nonetheless, they are in that uneasy coalition. I, however, am willing to predict, prediction is hard, especially about the future, but, I am willing to predict that as Folks on the left go through their versions of the autopsy report to try to figure out what they can do to win in the future. The key to success, the one who figures it out, will be whomever can combine those two wings of the Democratic Party and more broadly in the left, somehow figure out how to get the secularists and those other religious folks to work together. And if they can do that, then I suspect you will see dramatic change in American politics. Thank you. Thank you.

5: 15:27

All right. thank you. so I'm going to show, just a few slides. So, you know, post, I love the word post mortem, right? Um, death, right, is, is, the root, the Latin root, there. So, you know, if we think of ourselves as staring over the body, right, we're thinking the body of the election, we're kind of slicing and dicing it, doing the autopsy, those metaphors are right. I have to say that, I also wonder if we're staring, standing over the body of democracy. In many ways, and I'm deeply worried about that, so my comments are going to reflect, I think that, that feeling as well, but let me, at least in terms of like, so what happened? I think, Professor Campbell is exactly right, what's re, maybe the most remarkable thing about this, election is what did not change. I, I think I agree with that, and in fact, you can look at the religious landscape in America. It has hardly changed since 1980. In terms of who votes which way, essentially what you can see here, this is, this is the 2024 election. It is, what I've got here is a combination actually of the Edison national election pool data and just to make sure we all, are on the same page. We now have. two big exit polls to look at, in the country. There is sort of an older one, this, this, the, any, the national election pool exit poll. That's the one that's sort of the big, the New York Times and the big networks, use. There's also an AP vote cast, Associated Press, and vote cast has a different one as well. They largely, show similar things. There's a couple of places where they diverge, and I'm going to kind of point that out, but basically, they do show this, this story that it is essentially, white Christian groups, all three of the kind of big white Christian groups that we tend to parse out in, in the social sciences, white evangelicals, white Catholics. And white, non evangelical Protestants who all were in majority support for Trump in the election. Now, everybody seems to know the kind of eight and 10 white evangelicals supported, Trump, but if you sort of sort the Catholic vote by race and ethnicity, and you sort of look at the white, non evangelical Protestant vote, the thing that most people don't know is that historically, and in this election. White non Evangelical Protestants vote about 6 in 10 for Trump every time he's been on the ballot. White Catholics vote about 6 in 10 for Trump every time he's been on the ballot. Right, so kind of just remembering it's a white Christian thing, not just a white Evangelical, thing. And so I've kind of put this little line in the data here, so you can see the group, the only other group that's in that kind of, world of kind of voting, for, for Trump are Latino Protestants, right? That's the only other group that's, that's in that kind of six and ten or more, group voting, voting for Trump. They are overwhelmingly charismatic, Pentecostal, and evangelical, right? So they're kind of close cousins to the white evangelical world, and they pick up both the theology and the political, context from there. And then below sort of that little line, you see other groups, Christians of color, followers of other religions, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, et cetera, are all kind of leaning hard the other way. the one group I want to, I haven't asked this here, are Latino Catholics, and I think that, I'm confident enough at this point to say that the NEP exit polls, I think, got it wrong. On Latino Catholics, by a lot. and so they, they showed for the first time ever, that Latino Catholics were majority support for Trump. we have never seen that in any pre election polling ever. so I was like, what is that about? And it, the AP, vote has, has them down around four and ten. And we have, we have very recent data we're releasing on Friday that looks like it's about four and ten support for Trump. So I think that, that, now that's a move up. It is more move in that direction as we saw among Latino voters across the board. but, but I don't think it's, it's not in majority territory. I think they're more around the kind of four and ten, mark as they have been a little bit more in the past. But to kind of just make this, kind of put a fine point on this, if I combine it all down to, to kind of more simple categories, here's what we essentially see historically. Again, since 1980. If we put all white Christian groups together, it's about two thirds of white Christians always voting Republican, no matter who's at the ballot. Trump didn't change this at all. But here's this kind of stark thing. Christians of color, mirror opposite, two thirds voting Democrat, right? So just that one thing, we had to kind of think it back to H. Richard Niebuhr's, The Scandal of the Color Line in the Christian Church, that he wrote a hundred years ago. non Christian affiliated pe religious people who are not Christian. Two thirds supporting Democrats. the, the nones, the religiously unaffiliated, seven in ten, supporting Democrats. Right? So it's essentially white Christians over here, and kind of everybody else over there. and that, that has basically been consistent since 1980. so let me just kind of run through a couple of other things. The other thing that we saw that I think has been under reported, is the end, I'm, I'm just going to say it this way, the end of the Republican Party as a pro life party. and that has really not been reported on very well, so the Republican Party no longer has the strong pro life plank in its platform, as it has again since the early, 1980s, and it ceased to be the driving, force among Republicans, in, in the election. So, this, this chart shows you, the, what, what, in 2020, I've got the numbers up here, what each, each party said was, the most critical issue, to their vote in 2020. You can see Republicans. half of Republicans said abortion was, a critical issue to their vote. Only 38%, said that immigration, was, the most critical issue to their vote. But look what happens in 2024. So, with Trump sort of post OBS, Trump moving away, right, from ta and basically taking out the sort of strong pro life plank in the Republican Party platform. Republicans go only 29 percent of Republicans in this election's going ahead in the election said that, abortion was the most critical issue to them. 71 percent said immigration. Right? And so that is a huge sea change that I think we've not only begun to kind of wrap our heads around on this election cycle. the other thing I'm going to say is the fourth is the kind of power of Christian nationalism that is very much tied to this xenophobic. and racist, you know, argument, that, about, about immigrants and the harm that immigrants are gonna do, that immigrants are replacing, real Americans, that immigrants are poisoning the blood, that immigrants are vermin, right? These are Nazi sentiments that we heard, coming from Trump in this last election, and tied to these Christian nationalist sentiments. On the left is, the electoral map. from, from the kind of red blue map we've all been looking at way too much, but on the right, here is a map of the levels of support for Christian nationalism in every state. And you can basically see, this pattern, right, looks the same, right? So you basically have this kind of strong, support for Christian nationalism coming down through the Midwest, sweeping down through the South and up the Appalachian Mountains. Right, state by state. This is a result of, data set for, it's over 22, 000 interviews that we conducted, at PRI, measuring Christian nationalism all the way down to the state level. Here, so you can kind of see that, and just to kind of parse it out a little more. if you look at kind of red states, back, battleground states, and blue states, and our categories here are Christian nationalism adherence, sympathizers, skeptics, and rejecters. I can talk more about that, but it's a kind of scale of five questions that we use to measure it, here. But if we look at it, you can just see, this is the two, top two categories of those who are Christian nationalism adherence or sympathizers, and you can just see this linear relationship, right? the more, if you, if you live in a red state, much more likely to support Christian nationalism. Battleground states are in the middle, and blue states are much more like, much less likely to support Christian nationalism. Here, the kind of skeptic and rejector numbers on the other, on the other side of that. And then finally, this one, that I think is also kind of a stunner. this is, every state, so each dot is a state. on the x axis we have, the score on the Christian nationalism scale, and on the y axis we have percent, support for Trump in 2020. This is among white voters, in the country. And It's, it's essentially this linear relationship, right, between the higher you are support for Christian nationals, the more likely you are support for Trump among white voters. if you were writing a statistics textbook and you wanted a kind of example of a kind of clean scatterplot that shows a linear correlation, like this would be it. Like there's very little noise here. They're all tightly clustered around that trend line. My home state of Mississippi is up there on the top. corner, right, most light, highest on both scales, Massachusetts is way down on the other end, down the bottom, and then all the battleground states are somewhere in the middle. so you can basically see this. So I, I think that, Showing just this one variable, right, is like so tightly connected, here, the only last thing I do want to say, as maybe a little caveat, David, to your comments is, I know what you mean when you say about sort of like the religious content has dropped out a little bit, but what's interesting is even as I think that's true, we are also finding that, church attendance among whites. is a higher predictor of support for Trump, a higher predictor of support for Christian nationalism, a higher predictor of anti immigrant, status. So it is, at the same time, some religious content has dropped out, but the church has not dropped out. And I think that's a really interesting thing that, that, that, that, if you're white, the more likely you are to go to church, the more likely you are to support Trump in this election. If you were African American, the more likely you went to church, the more likely you were to support Harris. in this last election, so I'll stop there.

2: 24:16

I was mistaken about the seating order matching the speaking order, Christopher Parker will speak next.

3: 24:22

Okay. thanks. It's good to be here. Always wanted to visit here. so it's good to be here on somebody else's time. I will say that, I do own suits, but it's too cold, right? So I got out this morning too cold. So had a heavy jacket here, the heaviest one I got. So It bothers me. And then there's another way I stand out, it seems beyond the obvious locks, right? So it seems as though I'm the only one up here who's going to give a presentation that has nothing to do with religion, right? so I welcome that for right now. So what I'm going to explain here is enduring support for Trump. Am I supposed to get the clicker? Okay, so enduring support for Trump. So this comes out of a larger intellectual project that I've been conducting since I want to say about 2010. and so, so first you had the Tea Party, and then you got MAGA, and then you got Trump. Like, I can talk a whole lot more about this. And I've published on this. So if anybody's curious, and, and I don't have enough time to like really get to it today, then please let me know. And I'll be happy to, Follow up with an email for, you know, to satisfy your curiosity if you're so inclined, so oh, which one is it? Oh, this one here. Okay, so, I will say this right now, if I know this is Indiana, so I know this is, I'm in mixed company here, so, and that's okay, so I'm gonna say some things that are shocker, a little critical about Trump. Okay. Shock. Okay. So what I will say is, so we, let's think about like how this guy got reelected. He mishandled the pandemic to the tune of, you know, roughly 40 percent of the deaths could have been avoided, damaging democracy, a likely authoritarian term coming up that is really. likely in store for us. Election interference, capital riots, convicted of 34 felonies, this country's become a haven for hate and that hate crimes have increased and it is around Christmas time, so I'll say a partridge in a pear tree. And yet, his, okay, my bad, thank you. And yet, his popular vote increase, his vote share increase from 63 million and 16 to 77 million, this year won all the swing states in 2024 and improved his electoral college, results slightly, but it's still obviously significant. So, how can we, I'm trying to do both of these at the, you know what, let me just do this. Okay, how can this be, that is to say, like, how can this guy still be so successful in spite of all that and, and much more that I've not even named? Well, what Trump represents, at MAGA folks, and I don't know if we have any MAGA folks here, you probably disagree with me, and I will be happy to argue with you on this. But from everything my research shows, and has shown for many years, is that the MAGA group sees Trump as the last thing between them and the rest of us. And what I mean by the rest of us You know, the progressive, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which would include somebody like me, that would include a lot of educated, Americans, but mainly white folks, mainly, not exclusively. But mainly white folks, right? And I can go back and I can talk about Hofstadter's work in the 1960s. Like, that was a precursor to a lot of the stuff that I do. and that you have this reactionary right that is really concerned about cultural change. Cultural change. This has nothing to do, like, my colleague, Professor Campbell and a lot of other people say that Trump support is really a lot about economic anxiety. I assure you it is not. I assure you it's not. So, and I say that because, yeah, for some parts of the, of the population, it could be like for some working class whites, okay, yeah, I'll buy that. But what about all the wealthy and middle class white folks that support Trump? That's not about economic anxiety. So let me get down here. I'm sorry. So, status threat. So, my colleagues and I make the argument that what we see actually that we would argue that represents a social psychology of the MAGA movement is status threat. Status threat is the social psychological component of a broader theory of reactionary politics in which dominant groups are threatened by social progress and seek a return to the hierarchy of the status quo ante. Status threatened people, moreover, read cultural changes in American society as existential threats to their way of life. Not to their pocketbook, but to their way of life. And to their cultural dominance. That is to say, their relative social prestige. Okay, I think I'm getting the hang of this now. Okay, here are some historical examples. The KKK, both versions, and I'm sorry, I don't know if Rory McVeigh is here. Is Rory here? Is he? Oh, he's not here? Okay. Rory is a resident expert on the Ku Klux Klan. Like, I will give all props to Rory. We do have some small disagreements, but yeah, he's the person on this. So both the 19th century version and the Early 20th century version of the Klan. The 20th century, 19th century was a reaction against Reconstruction. The early 20th century version of the Klan was a reaction to the so called New Negro, increasing pushes for equality for women, the increasing, capacity of the Jewish community. you know, when it comes to financial issues or financial matters, right? And that's just three things, right? so that was the Klan of the 1920s, the Klan of the 19th century, the John Birch Society, of course, of the mid late 1950s and early 1960s, and their reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. And then, of course, the Tea Party, which was a reaction to the Obama presidency. And so what we're seeing now, Next slide. So why now? You know, the continued acceleration of social change. Demographic change, that is to say, citing some of Robbie's work on the decline of Christians, white Christians, right? gender asymmetry in higher education, that is to say the decline of men, but moreover, the increasing visibility and power of women. in American society, non conforming gender identities, and of course, you know, the, the increasing, importance of immigration from quote unquote shithole countries. In some quote unquote heritage Americans, whites, men, Christians, have become more insecure about their place in the social hierarchy. And so, I would just also like to mention when we sort of think about the Tea Parties, credo, take our country back. Well, in time, or from whom? and the MAGA movement, make America great again. Well, for somebody that looks like me, when was America ever great? Like, somebody please tell me, so I can get a clue. Okay.

6: 31:25

Oops.

3: 31:25

Okay, so we developed, we developed, our own original measure, status threat. and so it consists of seven items, and they, and some of them also have this sort of temporal, flavor to it, if you will. Flavor to them, if you will. Just like I said, take, take America back. Or, make America great again. They, they have that sort of, those temporal dimensions. Well, some of our items also have these temporal dimensions. and I don't want to go through all of them right now. I'm happy to circle back in Q& A, if you want. Okay. So, but this is what we tried to do here. So what we wanted to do was try to predict. status threat. What? Oh my gosh. It's almost 10 minutes already? Okay. Alright. This time flies, man. Okay, so we have age, so this is all among white. This is all among white folks, right? Nope, nope, this is everybody, my bad. So age, you know, the older one is, the more likely one is to feel status threatened. If you're white, of course. Christian, yes. Religious, yes. Heterosexual, yes. Now, the sign, the coefficient for gender or male, that, somehow that got misplotted. It should be on the other side of the broken, dotted line here. College, which means, which suggests that if you're, College educated, you're like, this is just a dummy variable, you're less likely to feel status threatened. If you live in a rural area, yes. If you're politically knowledgeable, no. Median, at or below median income, nothing. Right? And again, I have lots more, and I'm out of time, so thank you for your patience.

7: 33:01

Thank you so much. I'm Catherine Stewart. Thank you. All of you for being here. Thanks to the conference organizers and to my fellow panelists. Much of the post election analysis has focused on the small population of swing voters, the people who apparently decided at the last minute, that they were, Democrats were to blame for the price of eggs and things like that. I focus my forthcoming book, and I will focus my remarks here, on the much larger group of voters who are always going to support Trump and the MAGA party in the 2024 election. So what is the reason for their immovable support? There's a second related question that I want to address. It's not why did Trump win, it's why was he on the ticket in the first place. I want to frame this in a non partisan way if possible. After all, there are any number of Republican candidates who might have represented many of the policy preferences ostensibly associated with Trump. But I'm going to assert that the fact that a convicted criminal who sought to overturn an election, who incited a violent attack on our Capitol, the fact that he was the one on the ballot, this fact reflects a massive failure of our democratic institutions, not just in government, but also in civil society. So my question is, how did our various democratic institutions let us down in this way? My forthcoming book, comes out in February. It's titled, Money, Lies, and God Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. And it has three parts. They're named in the title, Money, Lies, and God. They stand for three interconnected factors that I think help answer some of these questions. Money refers to the massive concentrations of wealth in recent decades and the emergence of a subset, a subset of plutocrats who have effectively given up on democracy and now actively seek to destroy it. Lies refers to the disinformation and conspiracism that plays a key role in cultivating the Trump supporting base. And God refers to Christian nationalism, the ideology that motivates the largest and most reliable sector of the Republican vote, and thus enables the agendas of the movement's super wealthy funders. Put these three factors together, and you have the explanation for a distinctively American and modern form of authoritarianism. So first, let's talk about money. The ideology of market fundamentalism has been so successful in recent decades that it has persuaded many billionaires, along with a number of Americans, who are not billionaires, that they have earned and deserve every single penny that they have. A subset, you know, super wealthy people in this country are very diverse politically, but a subset tell us that they just want freedom and deregulation, they want the government to leave them alone. But then they devote enormous sums of money to the Christian Nationalist and anti democratic movement and its disinformation machine. So let me make clear that most of that money comes from extractive monopolies and oligopolies. When they say deregulation, or they say they want to, quote, destroy the administrative state, a phrase we're starting to hear more and more, what they really mean is that they want government subsidies for their businesses, in many instances, but they really want protection from market forces. They don't want to have to pay taxes on the same basis as the little people, and they want to eliminate unions. and weaken other workforce protections. Over the past decades, these funders have also devoted enormous sums of money to shaping the courts through the Federalist Society and its many, related organizations. But the culture war issues that they litigate, that get a lot of the news, are, you know, they're the ones that get a lot of the media attention, but what they're also, these courts are also pursuing a sort of billionaire friendly economic agenda. With people like the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo whispering in their ears these wealthy donors have decided that democracy would really never, deliver on their preferred policy preferences. So they built up a very well funded, right wing legal ecosystem as a way of circumventing the will of the people. and a third and final point, the role of dark money in manipulating the judiciary and lobbying Congress is pretty well known. But, in my book, I show how big money directly attacks democracy in other ways. It plays a major role in funding the conversion of many of America's conservative church networks into a partisan political operation. I sort of get into that in detail, in my previous book, The Power Worshippers. It was vital in spreading the big lie about the supposedly stolen 2020 election. It pays for significant efforts in voter suppression. through gerrymandering and other means. And it is a powerful factor in the spread of disinformation. we can't really understand what's happening in our country until we understand that sort of disinformation ecosphere. So this leads to my second theme, which is lies. People talk often about the media as though it's one thing, and it's not. Much of the right wing mediasphere really doesn't rise above the level of propaganda. This sphere is really successful because it starts by taking real concerns, the economy, inflation, crime, issues related to different communities, but then relentlessly misinforms the targeted base about the nature of the problems we face and about solutions. It also takes side issues that affect very few people and sort of blows them up, turns them into the issue of the day. And that distracts ordinary Americans from Defending their real interests. A measure of the success of this disinformation sphere is the level to which American, the American public is disinformed about key facts. So, for example, a recent YouGov poll asked people about what share of the black is, share of the population is black, Muslim, trans, etc. People said something like 17 percent of the population is trans. The real number is barely half of 1%. They said 40 percent of Americans are black. The real number is 12%. I mean, it's, it's hilarious. They always said, I think, what number is it? Maybe 30 percent of the population is Jewish, the real number is 2%. You know, it's funny, but it's also really not funny at all. Because disinformation works by convincing people that they're under siege by undeserving others and moochers who want to steal from them, you know? It creates fantasy and, or take their opportunities and supplant them. It creates fantasy conspiracies that lock people in and makes them really hard or impossible to reach with the facts. And we're all about to enjoy holiday dinners and I'm sure some of us will have some experiences with members of our extended families who are hard to reach with the facts. You know, the major theme of my book, the third major theme, is Christian nationalism. Which, by the way, is not the same thing as Christianity. It's the exploitation of religion for politics and power. Obviously it involves religion, but it's not the whole of Christianity. So today we have a shadow, extremely well funded faith based political party. It's leadership driven and organization driven. It drive, it campaigns for specific candidates. And one party only, it gets out the vote, but because it's faith based, it's tax free and, unregulated, and exempt from other laws to which other for profit and non profit organizations, have to conform to. Christian nationalism grooms its adherence for strongman politics by telling them that they're the most persecuted group in society, handbasket because of an enemy within. And it tells them in any measure, no matter how radical, is necessary to save the country. This primes them for embracing an authoritarian leader who will break the rules and exact retribution on their perceived enemies. So back to the starting question, the answer to why Trump won the election has less to do with low information swing voters who are always there. And frankly, you know, always gonna swing one direction or the other, but with a high disinformation base that is locked in place and is nearly impossible to move. The other question I raised at the start of my talk, how did Trump manage to get near the ballot? My answer is that the same forces that have brought us an anti democratic movement have succeeded in undermining key institutions. The Judiciary, the integrity of religious institutions, the guardrails of one of our two, major political parties, our education system. If we want better outcomes, we can start by learning how these institutions have been undermined and commit ourselves to the process of restoring them. Thank you.

8: 41:44

Good morning everyone. thank you for having me. I'm Carrie Kaysel. I teach in the Political Science Department here at Notre Dame and I have to confess I'm a little bit of an unusual choice for this panel. First of all, I don't study The U. S. I study Russia and Chinese politics. I don't study democracy. I study autocracy. The countries I study do not have elections that are free, fair, and competitive. They're mostly decorations. So I wanted to offer some reflections on, on the election for what it's worth from a comparativist who studies Russia and China and And what I see as, as a very curious observation in U. S. politics is the fanatical support by President elect Trump and some MAGA Republicans, the admiration of Vladimir Putin. And it's not just Putin, but it is other authoritarian leaders, Xi Jinping in China, Kim Jong un in North Korea as well. So, this Republican and MAGA fascination with Putin and with Russia is very real. MAGA Republicans talk about Putin as if he were an ally. Trump has called him, quote, a genius. a tough cookie. A real man. In Charlottesville, white supremacists and neo Nazis, among the many things they chanted was quote, Russia is our friend. Putin by contrast tends to treat the United States As an enemy, very far from an ally. So what explains this popular appeal of Vladimir Putin? I think one explanation is the appeal is this idea of a strong Christian nation in Russia. Trump and many MAGA Republicans talk about Russia and feel this ideological sympathy with Putin's version of Christian nationalism. This portrayal of Russia as a strong Christian nation and Putin in many ways as the defender of Christian values. And, by some measures, Russia is very much a Christian nation. Two thirds of the Russian population identify as Orthodox Christian. The Russian Orthodox Church has played a foundational role in nation building, has a very close relationship with the Kremlin. Kremlin elites from Putin all the way down talk about their religious identity, professing their faith, positioning Russia as the defender of global Christianity. So Putin and Kremlin propaganda talks about Russia as holy Russia. Russia as the third, Rome as the center of global Christianity, the true center, Russia as morally superior, superior to the West, to the US and Europe, Russia as the defender of Christian values. And this rhetoric has been operationalized in domestically and Russian pop propaganda. This is part of the rationale for defending Assad in Syria. But also the more recent invasion in Ukraine. Russian media is talking about it as a holy war in the past several months. So perhaps MAGA Republicans, have imagined a better ideal version of society that exists, what they imagine exists in Russia, this strong Christian nation unified behind or, underneath a very powerful leader like Vladimir Putin. However, as someone who studies Russian politics, this is absolutely not the reality on the ground in Russia. First of all, Russia is not terribly religious. in terms of measures of religiosity, if we would take the measure of, of church attendance, churches, cathedrals tend to be fairly empty on Sunday mornings across Russia. It is a deeply secular societies, far more secular than Western Europe, where, where religion is seen to be in decline. Second, religious persecution is incredibly high within Russia. Russia has some of the highest government restrictions on religion, and especially religious minorities, and here I'm not talking only about Muslims, which, which are a sizable portion of the population, but Christian minorities, non Orthodox Christians. These are Evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals, Catholics, Lutherans. These are communities, Christian communities, that are targets. From the government and police. Christian minorities are talked about in Russia as sex or cults in the media. This is the language that is used. They're harassed by police. Under Putin, Jehovah's Witnesses have been banned by the Russian Supreme Court because they're considered terrorists and extremists. So the appeal of the strong Christian nation in Russia is not at all informed by the reality on the ground to put it differently. The same churches that some MAGA Republicans may be worshiping in within the United States, these same churches are facing pressure, discrimination, harassment, and liquidation within the Russian Federation. So to think of Russia as this bastion of a Christian nation or the protection of religious liberty is, it's not a champion of religious freedom by any stretch of the imagination. The second point that I want to make is perhaps the appeal of Putin and Russia more generally is this assumption of an ideological affinity, this admiration for Putin and his promotion of, of traditional values as he talks about. So over the past 15 years in Russia, Putin has talked about the West Yeah, as in decline. And by the West, he means both the European Union and, and the United States. Rapid decline. And this decline in the West is caused by a couple of things. The embrace of human rights and individual values. The fact that we've become too secular. He uses the language of woke. in, in Russian it is VOLK. so Putin is embracing the same sort of cultural rhetoric, cultural wars rhetoric in the U. S. U. S. and NATO, for example, he has argued is trying to, quote, cancel Russia. And this is part of the justification for the special military operation in Ukraine. And the evidence that Putin and Kremlin propagandists point to is the following. In the West, and in the United States in particular, we have support for LGBTQ rights, same sex marriage, women's rights, feminism, gender equality, and all of this has been brought on by the secularization of American society. And indeed, some Christian leaders in the United States and Christian organizations have latched onto this same rhetoric. They openly are praising Putin for his protection of traditional values. The World Congress of Families, evangelical leaders like Billy Graham, Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan, after, the occupation and annexation of Crimea in 2014, praised Putin saying God is, quote, now on Russia's side. So, the reality that I want to suggest, again, what's going on on the ground in Russia, this is not a bastion of protecting so called traditional values or family values, the focus on the family. In Russia today, there are more single parents than two parent families. Abortion rates are higher than in most European countries, according to the W. H. O. Alcoholism is a serious problem. Domestic violence is prevalent. One in five women face domestic violence. 14, 000 women die each year in Russia from domestic violence. This is nine times the number of the deaths. of domestic violence in the United States, despite the fact that Russian's population is less than half of our population. So it's not about protecting women and children or families. Under Vladimir Putin, domestic violence has been decriminalized. So what this means is that first time offenders pay a fine of around 5, 5, 000 rubles, 50 if convicted, of beating their partner. If convicted of beating your children, about 70 is the fine. So this again, my point is this is not about protecting family values, So to conclude, Trump and MAGA Republicans, this fascination with Putin and Russia is real but it is grossly, grossly misguided. Perhaps for Trump, if we could speculate, this feeds into his own person, you know, persona, strongman, macho persona that he imagines himself to be. It also doesn't hurt the fact that Putin regularly flatters Trump in the media, calling him intelligent. Courageous and a real man. All of this feeding into Trump's ego. As we can imagine. Others, MAGA Republicans are likely taking their. cues from Trump, but also the misguided assumptions that Russia is a thriving Christian nation with shared ideological values, the focus on the family. That is not the case. They're ignoring the fact, the very real fact, if they read the newspaper, that Putin's rhetoric about the U. S. reveals he is not an ally. He equates the West, quote, with the devil. Talks about Americans as being degenerates. The U. S. is having satanic culture. The West is the modern day promoters of Nazism, Satanism, and pedophilia. So Putin continues to treat the U. S. and speak about the U. S. as an enemy. It's wrong for MAGA Republicans, misguided for them to think of him as an ally. He's not. Thank you.

2: 50:41

Now begins the period of Q& A from our invited guests, the folks who are sitting in the reserved section. my colleague Laura has a microphone that she will be bringing. Oh, and Joel has one too. Great. Merrilee can start.

9: 50:58

Thanks so much for this. Super interesting. So, I'm a political philosopher. I lean liberal, lean liberal myself, but I have friends who also are liberal, but have the view in political philosophy that religious citizens should be able to vote and express their religious values. This person I know has been called a Christian nationalist, which was surprising to me, because you could have some theoretical debate about whether that claim, that religious citizens should be able to vote and express their values, like If they were in the majority, it might imply some inappropriate dominance or something. There's some interesting theoretical stuff there, but this person is not at all sort of in the culture or the ethos of that. And if he had to pick between democracy and his views, he'd pick democracy every time. so I'm wondering how you operationalize your definition of Christian nationalists. I forget what Philip M. Gorski's operizationalization of that definition was, but I'm concerned that there might be similar things going on, where there's things that might be put under that umbrella, which are maybe not fair to the people who then get categorized under that. And I'm particularly worried about this because I was recently at a conference with a lot of evangelicals, and, there's a lot of people who weren't sure sort of where to fit themselves in this picture. And if you make the definition too broad, people who might otherwise have been like, I like democracy, might be like, oh, I'm a Christian nationalist, all right, sign me up, I guess, you know, like, and kind of go full forth. so I want to be really careful about how we, how we operationalize that term, and it's been used consistently through everybody here, and plays, like, plays a lot of force in this debate, but I'm really worried about, like, what's our definition that we're using, because of the bad effects it could have for people.

5: 52:24

well, I, I can jump in. I mean, one of the nice things about data is that you have to operationalize something very specifically, right? So you can't, float with a fuzzy thing. So when we are measuring Christian nationalism, it's not a self identified label, but it is a set of attitudes that we, that we measure. There's been now, I don't know, five, six, seven years of good social science research, kind of establishing legitimate measures that have been vetted and tested. And so at PRI we, we use five statements and so the nice thing about this too, is that If you only use one statement, somebody might just hear it weird, right, or respond to a certain word in the statement, and maybe, you might unfairly categorize them if they're responding to something you're not quite, but if you've got five statements, they all correlate very highly together, and they're all predictive, so, like, if you answer this way on one, you're highly more likely to answer On these other ones. So the, the five statements, just so you know, are, are these. And, these are published on P'S website, at prri.org. so it is, is is this, God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society. These are all agree or disagree questions. the US government should declare America a Christian nation. Being Christian is an important part of being truly American. If the U. S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore. And U. S. laws should be based on Christian values. So you have to agree with all five of those statements to kind of be categorized. and, and we also have a gradation. So we have adherents, those people who actually strongly agree with all five. we have sympathizers, those are people who agree but not strongly with all five. And then we have skeptics, disagree but not strongly. And then rejecters who disagree with all. In the country, it's about 3 in 10 Americans who are in those first two categories of adherents or sympathizers.

4: 54:03

Can I just add something there? I'm actually, I'm very glad that this is our first question and that Robbie's been able to answer it with the specific data that is used to measure Christian nationalism. Now, I'll just say as somebody who, is in this literature, but I don't feel like I have a dog in any sort of academic fight over how you measure Christian nationalism. There are differing ways that these things are measured, but they all look very similar to one another. And so I'm less concerned with whether it's measured one way. Or another way, and more that in the conversation about Christian nationalism that people actually be precise about what they mean. Because I do fear that what's happening in the public discourse is that the term Christian nationalism has come to mean anything associated with the political right. And often anything that those on the left or the center don't like about the right then gets called Christian nationalism. And I don't, I think that is actually a. A problem if you really want to get at the issue of what does it mean to say that someone is a Christian Nationalist. And so I would encourage anyone, if you are engaging in those kinds of discussions, or if you're an academic and you're writing about it, not to just loosely throw the term Christian Nationalist around, because it does actually have some meaning. And not everyone who would, you know, vote for Trump, for example, would necessarily line up in the Christian Nationalist camp. and if we forget that, I think it, It runs the risk of our not recognizing what is actually hazardous, or what is the risk of Christian nationalism. So I guess that's just a plea for us to define our terms. Rick.

10: 55:40

I guess a lot of the conversation often talks about authoritarianism and retributive justice when we're talking about this stuff. But I'm also curious. there's also an end of the world apocalypticism that happens a lot of times, especially with, you know, the fear of the rapture and the way they even treat Israel, especially with Trump talking about how he did that for Israel, or for the evangelicals with the embassy. so I'm just curious, like, how much of the end of the world obsession and fanaticism is fueled by the status threat of them losing their authoritarian status on the hierarchy?

3: 56:13

I guess I could speak a little to that. so it's, it's, it's really real intangible. They feel like their way of life is threatened. I'm not there, you know, class position or anything like that, like who they are, right? It's, it's being threatened. And so that permits them, that gives them license ultimately to justify anything, that's necessary in order to, Reclaim their way of life, because the way that my co author and I characterize this, is more like a revanchist movement. That is to say, there has been some ground that has been ceded, right? And they're trying to reclaim it, right? Now, as far as the apocalyptic stuff is concerned, I mean, you see a lot of that in Hofstadter's book, you know, the Oh, what's the name of that book in 1964, 1965? I'm sorry? No, that was, that was before. it was, paranoid style in American politics, right? When he, during his discussion of pseudo conservatives. Like, it's the same thing that's motivating them. this idea that they're losing their where, like, and so they're, like, pushing really hard because they feel so threatened, right? And just think about it like this. Here's another way of thinking about this. This is not about policy disagreements, you know, like, you know, they disagree with the left. This is like, no, this is about, like, You know, fight, you know, good versus evil. So there's this real sense of like, yeah, it's about to hit the fan unless we do something about it. So I think, I think a lot of it can be derived from there. Or at least in Hofstadter's work, we get some clues. Or in Gusfeld's work on the temperance movement, same thing, right? We get the same kinds of clues.

7: 57:49

I'd like to echo what Christopher said. I, I think of it as four features that are sort of involved in this mindset. The, first this in group identity, the sense that there is an us that is virtuous, and, and a they that is un virtuous, this sort of pure versus impure, insiders versus outsiders, this idea of sort of, you know. second is the, the sense of persecution, the idea that, conservative Christians are the most persecuted group in society. with that comes a sense of apocalypticism. Like, we're facing the, you know, demonic, satanic enemy. This sort of idea, I think a lot of, you know, within the movement, a lot of folks see This idea of spiritual warfare played out on the landscape of contemporary American politics, and they consider losses in the political arena too dire to ignore. They are told this over and over, by leaders of the movement, that, you know, if we lose this, it's the end. there is this apocalypticism and, and then, and, and then, of course, that sort of primes the, the rank and file for, the rise of a, a strong man, who will basically crack heads as long as they belong to the heads of their perceived enemies and, and is willing to break the rules and break norms. and break institutions because that's what's necessary as they've been told to, to raise the country. They've often been told, to save the country. They've been told often that, you know, in the political arena, you know, God has his hand on their preferred candidates and the other side is, you know, spirit of Jezebel. We started to hear that a lot in the last election cycle or, demonic or satanic.

11: 59:28

Wes Granberg Michelson, two questions about what happened. First, all the focus has been on MAGA white evangelicals. we're here at Notre Dame. Can Robbie or David or others say more about what is happening within the Catholic vote, particularly as immigration changes the nature of Catholicism in the U. S.? Second, all the focus has been on white males. and that seems very clear. But I recently read that 53 percent of white women supported Trump and overall women's support was in the high 40s. Are those statistics correct? And if so, why? Did concern over status threat of Trump concern over gender or reproductive rights or other issues?

4: 1:00:13

well, I will, defer to Robbie on the, I'm looking, he's got the slides here, so specific data on, on the Catholic vote. I will, just briefly say, As you might imagine when you teach political science, especially religion and politics at Notre Dame, you can't help but talk a lot about Catholics. And, you know, students here are very interested in this subject, so I have a whole spiel I could go on. I won't, I'll shorten it. It is a myth to say that there is a Catholic vote in America, I am routinely called by reporters who want to know, what's the Catholic vote going to do this year? And the answer is, there is no Catholic vote. There are. There are multiple Catholic votes, and Robbie alluded to this, the fact that white Catholics and Latino Catholics vote very differently from one another. That's very important to keep in mind. It suggests that it's not the Catholicism that's driving, the vote one way or the other. so it's, it's just worth noting that, that, that in many respects, if you look at Catholics as a whole. In pretty much every election, Catholics as a whole look pretty much like the rest of the population. Which is itself a sort of statement of accomplishment for how thoroughly integrated or assimilated a Catholics are into the American population. It's looking at the different subgroups within Catholics, that's, that's where you get the real story. Again, white Catholics versus, Latino Catholics, Catholics who attend mass more frequently versus less frequently, etc. let me just quickly say about white women, that is accurate that white women went for Trump. they did in 2024, they did in 2020, they did in 2016, they, also would have gone Republican in 2012 In other words, When we talk about the gender gap, this is also glossing over a lot of other important differences that go far beyond gender. So white women have been strongly Republican now for quite some time. so when we talk about the gender gap and that women in general lean to the left or lean towards the Democrats, that's actually not so much the white women that are driving that, it is women of color. and that has been the case for a long time now. And so it's not actually unique to Trump. And that is actually something to keep in mind. And I remind my colleagues of this all the time, that, if you are a Republican, especially if you are a younger Republican, the only person you've known at the top of the ticket is Donald Trump. And so. To say that someone is supporting Trump often actually means that they are supporting the person with the letter R next to their name. maybe, you know, solve the issues that we might have about Trump's anti democratic tendencies. But that's the reality of why people might be voting one way versus the other. But I'll defer to Robbie on more specifics about the Catholic vote.

5: 1:02:49

I'll say one quick thing about women. So what we're finding more and more, and this has particularly been true in the last, say, 12 to 15 years, is that like on elections, or you're trying to predict outcome of elections, it is, less important to know a person's, self identified gender identity. It is more important to know what they think about gender. Right? So, for example, among white evangelical Protestants, there is no gender gap. among white evangelical process. As many evangelical women as evangelical men supported Trump, right? Eight in ten. Like literally no gap there. What the most important predictor actually around gender is, in our data at least, is a statement about whether American culture has become too soft and feminine. Like, if you agree with that statement, you are, like, overwhelmingly, way more than your own identification as a man or a woman or, or gender non binary or any of that. it is what you think about gender, right, that is the kind of driver there on the, the Catholic thing. Interesting, is that, so, you know, if you look at sort of Catholic as a whole, there's still about 20 percent of the, of the, of the population. Underneath that, right, is massive change in terms of race and ethnicity. back in the 1990s, the ratio of white to non white Catholics was about 10 to 1. today it's 60 40. right, white, white Catholics make about 60 percent of, of all Catholics, non white, about 40%, of Catholics, and they vote in kind of mirror image ways, in terms of party identification. Again, about 6 in 10, white Catholics voted for Trump, about 6 in 10 Latino Catholics voted for Trump. Harris, in the last, in the last election. So you've got to get this big split in the same way that you have a kind of white and black split among white, among Protestants, right? It's a very similar, kind of split. I think that's something we still haven't quite, either we think it's so normal that we don't quite pay attention to it, but we haven't really wrapped our heads around like that's a huge, huge, gap, in, in the, kind of voting preferences. My, my favorite line is from E. J. Dionne, like, there is no Catholic vote and it's important. He's fond of, fond of saying, but I think more and more we really have to understand, as we do among Protestants, the Catholic vote by race and ethnicity, because they behave so differently, in, in public space.

12: 1:04:52

Can I speak real quick on the, on the gender issue here? Like, I totally agree with, both of my colleagues to my right.

3: 1:04:57

yeah, I mean, David's right, like, you know, white women have voted for Republicans for it. You know, Jane Jones work shows this for at least the last 60 years, give or take, right? so I want to say that. But what I also want to say is, is that another reason why, I mean, so this is election is a little different as, the gentleman mentioned, like you had like abortion was front and center. So why still, would you still have so many? White women voting for Trump, given his position on the issue. Well, status threat does play a role in that, in the following way. just like, you know, one would think that women, especially, you know, not especially, but including white women would, you know, have, you know, a more feminist take on these things. But that assumes that. A majority of them, at least, are feminists, A. B, so think about white women in the past who have been fairly well educated. one comes to mind immediately, Phyllis Schlafly, right? Very well educated, right? But she was, like, right there, you know, in the John Birch system. Now, she wasn't a part of the John Birch Society, but she was part of that reactionary right. You know, but for her, we would have an ERA right now, I think, right? So that's one and then of course I can name Michelle Bachmann and even lower Sarah Palin, right? Like so, so I'm just saying you wouldn't, one wouldn't confuse any of these women with a feminist.

7: 1:06:15

Yes. I would like to add something before we end. You know, I do a lot of, the way I do a lot of my research is I go to right wing conferences and strategy gatherings and summits and the last two or, conferences I attended were Ralph Reed's Road to Majority Conference and, Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council's Pray Vote Stand. I feel like half of Pray Vote Stan was about the issue of transgender women playing on women's sports teams. And again, you know, one thing the right is very good at doing is they do their market testing. They, they find a side issue that affects very few people, relatively few people, and then they make it the issue of the day. And this was the issue that I think appealed to a lot of conservative women. and has actually some, cross, some bipartisan appeal in, in many regards. So, this is why that issue was focused on so much. Where, you know, they still talked about abortion. I mean, you're gonna go to PrayVoteStand, it's a pro life audience, right? It's an anti abortion audience. But this issue, I felt like it was pumped up even more than in, than the abortion issue. And I thought that was kind of an interesting feature. I have a, I know of another colleague, I don't know if they would want me to cite their name here, but they did a lot of exit interviews of, conservative evangelical men and conservative evangelical women. What was the issue that they said motivated their vote? You know, and the men cited the economy, as we know this idea of the economy is often filtered through sort of cultural, issues. It, you know, it may not, you know, I mean the price of eggs is rising in Vienna too. Are they going to blame that on Kamala Harris? But, you know, they cited the economy, but for women, it was that issue, the sports issue and also the idea of, parents rights in, in public schools, which is another issue that we know the right has been pushed, and the Christian Nationals at those conferences, they were pushing those issues, very, very hard to, you know, public schools, or Marxist indoctrination factories, or changing your kid's gender against their will, they're gonna go to home, school a girl, come home a boy, like this kind of conspiracism, this sort of fantasy, but those kinds of messages, when they're repeated over and over and over, become very powerful, motivators for people. So that, I think helps explain some of those results. Call

2: 1:08:43

on Chris.

23: 1:08:44

One of the things that I'm most concerned about with this election is that, Dr. Parker, you showed the increase in Trump support over time and that, We talk about the will of the people. He got the most votes this time, which was not the case in either of the previous elections. And one thing I'm thinking about, and I'd like to dig further in here, is we've covered a lot of MAGA on this panel, but MAGA is not enough to get the most votes. And I also think some of the conversations post election, it's like an election happened to Democrats. And there's not as much, I think the two of you just mentioned Kamala Harris, that might have been the first time Kamala Harris name has come up in the conversation. Democrats had a billion dollar campaign war chest. So I'm wondering in addition to sort of the very helpful history of what the heck is going on in the Republican Party, what else contributed to the sort of deeper answer to this what happened question?

7: 1:09:38

I would love to answer that just very quickly. I think that, the money is spent differently on the right. The money is spent on infrastructure building, organization building, and relationship building, and leadership development. On, and within the Democratic Party, it's often going to particular, politicians. Sometimes the money comes in in September, and the, you know, the election is in November, or, There's like very sophisticated data operations that the right has access to that I don't think are matched on, on the other side of the political aisle. So I think that there is money on both sides, but, you know, it doesn't matter if Trump didn't have a war chest because the organizational infrastructure of the movement, you know, is robust and much of it functions as a giant voter turnout machine in election cycles. So the money doesn't have to follow the politician, the money follows the issues. And ends up electing the politicians who conform to the issues that they want.

3: 1:10:35

Can I just speak to this just for a quick, second? Let's just identify the elephant in the room. I know there are several elephants probably at this point. But, I'll just name two ones that have yet to be mentioned. Misogyny and racism. Right? Let's just, let's just get that out of the way. Like, and so I think, I mean, look, if Hillary couldn't win in 16, like, look, I wanted Kamala to win. Like, I have my issues with her as well, but I'm thinking, like, given all of the things up here that we've said that this, this candidate on the right, Trump, has done, like, even before he was elected the first time. Not to say nothing about all the stuff after he was in office, right? And then after he was, he was defeated in 2020 with the Capitol riots, I mean, I should have been able to put my dog against him in this campaign and she should have won, right? So the fact that, you know, we have this black woman up here who was eminently qualified to say the least. And still couldn't, I mean, like, it is unbelievable to me that this has happened, right? Let me stop. It's unbelievable that it's actually believable that this happened, right? So, I just want to just put that on the table right now. We can dance around this as much as we please, right? But let's just, and I'm not saying that racism is, and, and I'm, like I'm saying, I'm not saying even sexism. Because sexism is really just about discrimination against women. No, this is misogyny. Right? Let's just, let's call it what it was. So, so I just want to get that out there. It's not dispositive. I'm not saying that, you know, that answers everything. But I will say, with Catherine here especially, like a lot of this stuff filters through cultural issues and race and gender is part of that milieu.

5: 1:12:23

I've said like one little quick hall of fame thing. it's important to remember, like, we're, we're counting votes, right? and turnout, right, is not the whole country, right? So I think the latest number, I don't know, David, like 60, 61%. of eligible voters, something like that. I think that we still don't have the final numbers. That means like four in ten eligible voters didn't show up, right, at the election. When you look at that map that I showed a minute, it looks like a sweep, and it was a sweep, right, there's no doubt. Like, let me just say, like, I, I am happy to be in a conversation where we can say, this is what the election showed, like, and many people in the room. and I'm gonna let him say we lost, right? And that that's an accepted reality. And that we're having a conversation around. So I just wanna like applaud that, here. but That's where we're at in this country, folks. One

4: 1:13:06

side loses and says, okay, we lost. We lost, right? And we're talking about why we lost, right?

5: 1:13:10

Or why the, this was fortunate Harris lost. But the other thing to say is that, again, we're still waiting on final, final numbers, but like as these numbers come in, it looks like that 233, 000 or so votes could have pushed the election the other way. Like in other words, you give me 233, 000 votes and let me kind of put them in the swing states where I want, we get President Harris. So we're talking about, like, these just impossibly small margins and, you know, I think you're still right, Chris, like, how, you know, is that still an operative question, right? But still, it is an impossibly small, margin. There's like no huge mandate and, and it also means on the other side, for those like worrying about what lessons to be learned outside of. Wow, the power of partisanship, right, and wow, the power of racism, you know, I think it like, yeah, that's all right. I mean, we don't, we don't get less real quick thing. It's important to remember that, like I said, this happens, this, this is the configuration we've had since 1980, right? Is this ethno religious sorting of voters since 1980? Well, why is that? Because of the Civil Rights Movement in 1964, my, my, I'm from Mississippi, all my grandparents were, Democrats, right? in the South, right? And there was this great white Christian flight from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party that began with the passage of the 64 and 65 Civil Rights Acts. They give us the parties we have today. The Republican Party today is 70 percent white and Christian in a party that is, in a country that's 41%. White and Christian. The Democratic Party is 25 percent white and Christian, right? it, it's still two thirds religious, by the way, but just 25 percent white and Christian. So, that sorting, that, like, the propulsion of that's not abortion, it's not LGBTQ rights, it is the civil rights movement that gives us the party sorting primarily to what we have today.

3: 1:14:55

Can I just, take a point of privilege and just ask my colleagues who specialize in religion and politics, for, Christians, for white Christians, like, where does the social gospel fit in? Like, where does, where does, like, where is that? We heard

5: 1:15:06

tell us something about

2: 1:15:06

that. I'll call on Bruce, then after this question I will open it up for general Q& A.

14: 1:15:17

Thank you so much for these very thoughtful, comments and great conversation. my question is about political party as a, as a concept. Back, many years ago when I was in, graduate school, taking classes in political behavior, I recall that the concept of party identification, party ID, was regarded as one of the most robust. Variables, a, a really, persistent predictor of individual political behavior. It took a long time before that phrase was even used on this panel, party ID or party identification. So, from one standpoint, or from the standpoint of the robustness of that variable, you could regard a lot of the hand wringing of those of us on the left, or less. Eight years as being just a forgetting of how robust that that variable is to David's comment earlier that that that the Who has the R behind their name is just gonna drive a heck of a lot of behavior So is the fact that that didn't come up earlier in this or more prominently in this conversation a reflection of the fact that? Parties now regarded as more of an epiphenomenon than it once was or has it declined in importance as a variable in literature

4: 1:16:13

Quite the opposite, Bruce. I think the only reason why you haven't heard me say party identification is that I, I think of it as kind of an inside baseball term, but now I feel like I can, I'm liberated, I can say it. Party identification, a psychological attachment to one party versus the other. that is the core principle of understanding how American elections work and why, it can be very frustrating when political scientists like myself are invited to speak on panels about what happened in the election and we say, yeah, well, people voted according to their party. now that is not actually 100 percent true because as has been noted, there are some swing voters. Far fewer than you'll be led to believe, but there are some swing voters, and those are the ones, of course, that get all the attention, all the love, from the various, parties. so, for me, what the more interesting question is, is not, how are people who affiliate, identify, affiliate with one party versus the other going to vote in any given election. We have a pretty good sense of that. It's this longer term question of, well, why is it that some people? and, you know, some people end up identifying as a Republican and some people end up identifying as a Democrat. And as you'd imagine, there's a lot of research on that, but when it comes to religion, we've learned a lot about how religious identities and just simply your religious involvement can lead you toward one party versus the other. And while that doesn't necessarily guarantee that in every election you'll always vote for the person of your party, it gives us a pretty strong sense. And it's also the case that most people hold on to that party identification over the course of their life. and so what you observe among people when they're young is likely to be their political affiliation or identification over the course of their life, you know, span. So that's Poli Sci 101 there.

3: 1:18:01

Just one other comment. You got the party girl right there. She's gonna get up there and talk about party. And the next pattern.

2: 1:18:07

Just to let the microphones know where I'll be going. So, way over there. And then Blake, and then way in the back, and then, and then we'll go from there. Thank

15: 1:18:17

you. Well, while we're waiting for a woman who can walk on water, and finally get elected, the thing that really stuns me continues to really make me angry and, and, and, and I'm listening to this fabulous data, particularly the data, Catherine, on the Republicans spending it on the infrastructure with the Democrats and the candidates and religion aside, I know the Alan Guttmacher Institute, according to their data, 25 percent of the women who have abortions among faith groups are Catholics. the majority of the women are women who already have a, a child. And the thing that absolutely still stuns me is cutting across all of that is the control of our bodies. Simply the control of our bodies. And regardless of how one might feel about abortion. As, as the Dobbs decision unfolded, they saw other extenuating circumstances, the IVF, the extreme reaction to the, the women dying, miscarrying to their point of, have you lost all your blood yet? Now we can move in. I thought, surely. That women would say enough, you will not control us as you have historically forever. Anybody in here who teaches history, has worked in anthropology, Women have been controlled forever. This is now the 21st century. I would have thought enough. Can you explain why it just simply wasn't enough? Because this will roll out for the next four years and I don't know how backward we're gonna get and how much we will have to recover between now and maybe certainly the midterms. But I don't know what's gonna be happening in 2028. But when, what happened? Why did women not stand up? Regardless of party. And say, enough, we've seen enough.

7: 1:20:05

well, you remember right before the election, Trump came out and said, oh, I'm not going to, and Musk, we've learned, has poured, what was it, 20 million into that funding for that messaging, I'm not going to end abortion. And many of us look at that and they say, who's going to believe that? Because it's the Supreme Court, you know, that was put there to do a job, and they're going to do it. But, but apparently, I, I know people who are sort of fairly, you know, centrist, but really care about abortion rights who got messages on their phones, you know, in the week or weeks before the election saying Trump is not going to end abortion, you know, this sort of data, strategy that they have to push messaging into people's social media feed feeds and knowing exactly. Which, you know, is this person a member of NASCAR? Does this person care about abortion rights? Does this person, you know, looking at their, there's all these, there's all this information out there that can sort of figure out where each of us sits on the political spectrum and the issues that motivate us and some of the targeted messaging, whether it's through Facebook or through, you know, different, Social media feeds that we tune into, you know. So I think that that kind of messaging, even though, you know, many of us sort of rolled our eyes and said, you know, it's not up to him. But a lot of people don't look beyond the immediate. They see this, oh, Trump's not going to end abortion. So, they believe it. And I think also there's a lot of cognitive dissonance out there. A lot of people don't have abortions until they need one. and, or they don't think they're gonna have abortions until they need one. there are a lot of women, I mean, I have to speak about this because it happened to me personally, who experience medical crises, where they need abortions to save their lives, and they might not think of themselves as, well, I, I wouldn't do that, and then all of a sudden, they need that to save their lives, or they need it because they can't foresee a future with the person who got them pregnant, or they're not in a position to have to, to, to expand their families at that moment. So I just think that there's a lot of, you know, because there's so much silence and shame around the issue, that a lot of people don't really take it in. Does that make sense?

2: 1:22:19

I'm sorry, we, we, we can't do follow ups. Blake, then way in the back, and then I, and then you. I'm, I'm gonna go in units of three.

16: 1:22:28

Hi, thank you so much for a great panel. Blake Chastain. I, I really appreciate this, you know, focusing on the motivations of, of all the various groups of voters. I, my question is really about how those motivations are formed and how they're directed. and, I'm speaking as someone who, my undergrad was at Indiana Wesleyan, down the, down the road here in Indiana. very conservative evangelical, you know, had a very, what I can now identify as like a very Christian reconstructionist type of, professor. And I, I have moved away from that, personally. but one of the, one of the things that came to mind was actually something that, Robert, you wrote in Why Too Long. You referenced, in, in that book, a 2002 study by Emerson and Smith that said that evangelicals in particular have a, limited, restricted cultural toolkit. And that was in 2002. And my question is, is that, toolkit even more restricted now, because Cambridge Analytica was a decade ago now. And, I recently read, Anneli Newitz's book, Stories Are Weapons, which is all about propaganda. and Cambridge Analytica actually took, took propaganda tactics and applied it to the U. S. populace, which generally the U. S. military doesn't do, but now we have political actors that are doing that. So is the Has, have the, the sort of the atmosphere, whether it's media or, or churches themselves, have those places become even more restrictive in those more conservative places in the last 20 years?

5: 1:23:57

All right, there's a lot there. I'll jump in, kind of take a swing. so thanks for the question, Blake. It's making me think about, kind of some things we've already talked about here. so, you know, David mentioned, the kind of partisanship, and our data shows this too. Absolutely become more salient, not less, right, over time. And, Alan Abramowitz, political scientist, has shown, like, it's negative partisanship, like, is one of the key. So, it's, it's less that we love our own party, more that we hate the other party, right? That's, that's what, that's what cements us, right, to, to partisanship as well. but if you kind of think about, sort of, status threat, and apocalypticism, and negative partisanship, right? These things all work together. and if, so, if you think the other party is literally a tool of the devil and that if they get into power, it is literally going to be the end of the world, right? That's a pretty strong cocktail for, only considering one party, right? If that's what you believe about the other, about the other party, it's also, and Lily will talk about this too, it's also correlated with, support for political violence, right? When you believe those things. Right? So not just about losing elections, but you might have to resort to extra democratic and even violent means, right, to, to, to take back, you know, what's yours, this, this kind of, retrenching. So, so that's the thing that's making me think of it. That's what I think is hardened, right, is this sense of like, and that, that for many churches, particularly, you know, in a group that's, that's leaning 80 percent or more, right, for one candidate, it's not even open for conversation anymore. I think that's what's really been locked down.

4: 1:25:23

It's also worth noting, the specific study that I think you are referencing that is referenced in Ravi's, book, refers to a very, individualistic conception of religion. So this goes to the earlier comment about what about the social gospel? Well, for many white evangelicals, If you're focused on an individual's piety, my own salvation, my own, behavior, you're just in a worldview where thinking about things systemically just doesn't make sense. Individually, actually, many of these folks on the sort of measures we use of, you know, how you feel about those of another race, they actually score pretty well. They don't, they don't look like racists by that measure. But they're also not willing to accept the idea that there is a, a systemic racism. Like, to them, the way you deal with racism is that you become friends with a black person. And that's it. That's all I need to do. And so the language of how, well, we need to think about structures and larger issues just doesn't resonate within that community, because that's not the way they, they see the world. And again, there's nothing intrinsic about religion, because many, you know, that leads you to that view. Lots of religions, lots of Protestant religions have a view of the collective and, and, you know, can think in those broader terms, thus the social gospel. That's just not what you necessarily find in that world.

2: 1:26:39

In the back, then in the middle, and then if there's time, Sarah.

17: 1:26:44

Hi, I wanted to thank you all for letting me participate in this group therapy session. We're all sharing together. and I suppose what was shocking to me about the results of the election, compared with 2016, is that I'm eight years older now, and as a millennial, then I thought demography was destiny, right? I thought all the old racists and misogynists were gonna die off. And then we'd have new, young, progressive people, right? And they do tend to vote progressive. But, one thing that the chattering classes talk about a bunch that we haven't really discussed in this panel yet, in depth, is the youth vote. And I'm curious about what, how are the life worlds, how are the religious worlds of young men and young women being formed right now, what's going on in my students heads? what is the future? of this coalition that we've described as a solid block, right, since 1980. Unchangeable. Well, no, of course they're changing, right? They're dying off and they're new racists and misogynists being born. Or maybe they wouldn't think of themselves that way, but what, what does it look like from their perspective? yeah, tell me about the youth vote.

5: 1:27:47

I'll plug, so my colleague Melissa Deckman at PRI has written a new book called The Politics of Gen Z. so I will plug that, that book out. we are seeing, a gender gap. Among particularly young white men, and I should make sure I'm saying young white men, here. It's particularly, kind of acute among, the kind of gender gap among white women and white, white men, and that's a real issue. So the whole manosphere, the whole, like, late appeal to those kind of right wing, kind of hyper masculine, toxic blogs that, that Trump went on at the end of the, that was not by accident, right? That was kind of an appeal to the kind of younger, gen Z kind of male. there's also a kind of, there is a kind of status threat in operative among that, that group as well. Can we fit in sales in here? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I'll pass the baton to you for that. No, no. No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. But, but it is about like status threat and, and, and it's part economic, but it is probably two to three parts cultural to every economic part, you know, that it is, there, but, but I, that's, but here's one thing to say though. the nuns, the way we see this through the religious lens is usually front through the unaffiliated who are more likely to be, religiously unaffiliated. and we're still seeing at the ballot box this, imbalance, where white Christians whose median age is somewhere around 56 or 57, vote at higher rates than other Americans do, right? So white evangelicals, for example, are only 13 percent of the population. Yes, you heard me right. 13 percent of the population. They were somewhere around 18 or 19 percent of voters at the ballot box in 2024. So about five percentage points overrepresented at the ballot box. the religiously unaffiliated are four to five points underrepresented. by their, so they tend to vote a little bit less that's mostly because they're younger. That's always true of younger people, but, but another way, if you gave me like a little magic wand and I could just like make the evangelicals vote at the rates that they vote and make the unaffiliated vote at the rates and have them proportionally represented in the electorate, we probably have a different outcome.

2: 1:29:41

All right, Diane, I believe. And then Sarah. And then if there's time on the side there.

18: 1:29:46

My Okay. Cut. observation really is prompted by this gentle lady's comments about not understanding why women voted for Trump. I would, what I was trying, what I wanted to point to and to ask the panel to comment about is why didn't white women change their votes? That's really the point that I think you should comment on in response to her.

3: 1:30:07

Can we get one of the women to start? You want to study American politics?

7: 1:30:11

Okay, okay. Well, I, I think that, you know, many, women are targets of, where many white women are targets of, I think I addressed this a little bit in a previous question when I was speaking about women on the religious right who were specifically sort of motivated by certain issues, and they're also, Subject to messaging. Subject to disinformation. you mentioned earlier Phyllis Schlafly. You know, it's interesting. I think within, you know, Kristen has written such, Kristen Comas Dubay has written an incredible book about this and how you should be up here speaking with us. about many women sort of raised within, these patriarchal movements who believe their best chance of dignity is operating within, that system. And who, that's, that's what they know, because that's the sort of context with this, within which they've been raised. So I think that's a, a motivating factor for a big sector. the disinformation and conspiracism was really heavy. I mean, are you guys familiar with Reawaken America? It's a traveling pro, you know, conspiracy fest, pro MAGA conspiracy fest, organized by Mike Flynn, who's one of Trump's big allies, usually one of the Trump sons, shows up to speak. There's a lot of, sort of, spirit warrior, new apostolic reformation type, you know, religion. There are a lot of, sort of, faith people, you know, religious leaders there who are speaking about spiritual warfare, playing out in the here and now, but the, the conspiracism is really thick. And, and, you know, they draw thousands of people to megachurches around the country. They've been doing it about once a month for a few years now. And the conspiracism sort of, it doesn't just affect the people in the audience. It gets distributed through the, you know, we know about Fox News, but that, that, that's like too mainstream for this, you know. There's like Telegram, and there's these channels, and YouTubers, and, there's this whole, far right propaganda sphere that, you know, draws its people out of the realm of reason. people of, men and women alike. And I think that was just an enormous factor in, in this election, unfortunately. And it's, frankly, made our country, you know, less governable, more polarized. and that, too, clears the way for like an authoritarian leader who will come in and say, you know, I alone can fix it.

8: 1:32:41

I do have something to add, Diane. To build on my, my panelist's point, about online spaces and misinformation. So part of my work is on influence operations coming from authoritarian regimes like Russia and China. And as we saw leading up, to this election, the narratives. coming from Russia about Harris in particular. as Chris mentioned, this is the racist misogyny tropes. And not that they all originated from Russia, but what, what the Kremlin can do is amplify these narratives in domestic spaces and really give them a megaphone and a, and a larger voice. So, you know, that suggesting Harris. is not smart. She slept her way to the top. All of these really, these horrible stories were being amplified. And it's, it's fairly easy to trace, trace these things back to Russia, but it is not just what we would say. I would say that helping Trump narratives, they're also coming from Russia, anti Harris narratives coming from the so called left. And so these are fake narratives coming from this. The liberal left, undermining Harris, saying she's not qualified, she's, you know, not the best candidate, that it is a rigged system. And so it's coming from both, you could say, you know, the Trump, so called Trump community, but also the, the, the left as well.

19: 1:33:56

So this is kind of like a piggyback on that, because I think it's hard to talk about Trump without mentioning that he's like a candidate that really came in the height of social media. So you have like, you know, Steve Bannon talks about flooding the zone with shit. I think Russia's version, you know, fire hose of falsehoods. Basically Trump says, you know, something outrageous. Then by 9 o'clock in the news, he said something worse. He's like almost impossible to cover. He seems immune to scandal. It doesn't matter if he rapes someone, if he defrauds cancer kids. Like, how do you cover someone who has a, seems to have scandal after scandal, because it just seems to numb people.

6: 1:34:35

Yeah.

19: 1:34:35

Like, beyond comprehension, like, it just overwhelms their cognitive ability to take in information. It seems like people then fall back more on that identity. Kind of defaults existing because they can no longer differentiate Fact from fiction, so they're more likely to go back to you know pre existing So how do you deal with covering a candidate that is just? Constantly scandal scandal scandal to the point that people can no longer You know and obviously it's getting amplified like you were saying Russia They they you know and then they just let it go like we have more than enough to you know douse ourselves with gasoline

8: 1:35:11

I'm sure I have an answer of how, how we cover it. I completely agree with your, your sentiments as that is, it is, we become numb, numb to it. And then. You have supporters dismissing, well, you know, Trump said this and these outlandish claims. Oh, but he's just exaggerating. He didn't, he was joking. He was meaning it. Or, you know, it's fake news or the system is rigged against him. And so people become apologists. It's a

7: 1:35:37

bit of a strategy. Wasn't it Steve Bannon who said, We're gonna flood the zone with, and then he used a sort of vulgar word. We're gonna flood the zone with. Shit.

6: 1:35:47

I'm happy to say that.

4: 1:35:53

Yes. I might say, I actually agree that, I don't know how deliberate it is on Trump's part, but, but I nonetheless do think that it is a strategy and certainly those around him are, I think, happy to allow these things to propagate because I think it does actually lead people to be numb, which is why those who are concerned about it. the implications of some of the authoritarian things that Trump has said, I would implore you to keep your eyes on the prize, on the thing that is most important, because it is so easy to get distracted by all of the other noise that goes along with Trump that is probably not as critical to the health of American democracy. and I, I fall into it too. I mean, there's a lot of ridiculous things happen and it's easy to just sort of get caught up in that, but there are things that are far more important. yeah. And that's where the attention should be.

3: 1:36:43

Let me just, just add to this. let's not, underestimate exhaustion too. So there's numbing and then there's exhaustion. You just don't want to hear it anymore. Right? And especially if you're from, if one is from a, if one of, Part of a member of a marginalized group, right? It's so then now you got to think about fear, right? So you have fear, you know and exhaustion, right? And but as as people as part of those groups one can't afford one has to remain vigilant, right? so How to cover him like I mean like who knows I mean like I have no idea I'm not a media person, but I do Take what? David said, seriously, we can't afford to take our eye off the prize, right? But I, but I do think this is a, I do think this is a strategy and it's so far proven effective.

2: 1:37:28

I will take the question on the side, but I warn everybody, I'm going to cut us off at 1045 regardless of who is speaking.

20: 1:37:36

Hello, Jane Rossing Frankenberger, and my question is specifically for Catherine Stewart. we hear a lot about the billionaires funding the MAGA movement, but you raised something that was new to me, which was especially billionaires from extractive industries. Did I hear that correctly? And if so, can you say more about it and why that might matter? Thank you.

7: 1:37:55

Yes, well, this, this has a history of going back to the 19, what is it, 1930s with, was called spiritual, I wrote about this, spiritual mobilization, where, a pastor got, very, a lot of money from extract, from oil companies and, and gas, and decided to sort of marry, more conservative forms of religion with, sort of, I would say pro, pro, like, libertarian politics. and so that kind of alliance has a real history in our country. it was, I, I believe, sort of some of these extractive industries that actually funded Billy Sunday, who was a sort of figure in an earlier time, who was, so there, there, there, this kind of alliance has a real history in our country, and we see it happening today. I mean, it's, it's no, I'm surprised that, oil and gas money, you know, is, is, they're, some of the biggest, large funders of the movement are from oil and gas. And then you have people, by the way, a lot of the funders are not themselves particularly religious or even Christian. Think about Barry Seide. He's a Chicago billionaire, Jewish, who, donated 1. 6 billion dollars to form the Marble Freedom Trust. Which is the largest political donation, in our country. And he put Leonard Leo, who's a, you know, headed up the Federalist Society and is a sort of money man of the religious right. He put him in charge of it. So they can spend 230 million dollars, every year without touching the nut. And, you know, flowing that into, you know, many of the organizations, no doubt, that Leonard Leo has been. engaged with in order to shape the courts in a, in a sort of pro oligarchic, right wing direction.

Paul Blaschko: 1:39:38

I want to thank our listeners for joining us this month on FiresideND. I hope you enjoy the episode and will visit think.nd.edu to learn more Until next time, inspire your mind and spark conversations.