Video: The 2020 Election: What Happened, What Comes Next?

Panelists Adrian Pantoja, Professor of Political Studies/Chicano Studies at Pitzer, Rachel VanSickle-Ward, Professor of Political Studies at Pitzer, and outstanding activists and scholars A’shanti Gholar, president of Emerge, the only organization dedicated to recruiting and training Democratic women to run for office, and Natalie Masuoka, Associate Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies at UCLA, discuss the 2020 election.

  • Transcript

    Adrian Pantoja:

    Welcome, everyone to our panel, “The 2020 Election: What Happened, What Comes Next?” This panel is being sponsored by President Melvin Oliver’s Racial Justice Initiative. We also have co-sponsorships by the Office of Student Affairs, the Chicano/Latino Student Affairs Office, the Office of Black Student Affairs, and the Campus Life Committee so I thank them all for making this panel possible. Let me go ahead and introduce the panelists. My co-host, and she’s also a professor and we co-teach Campaigns and Elections Research Methods, and we’ll probably continue to do that for some time, is Professor Rachel VanSickle-Ward. Professor VanSickle-Ward earned her BA at Pitzer College. She has her MA and PhD from UC Berkeley. As I mentioned, she’s a professor here at Pitzer College. Her research and teaching interests include public policy, public law, gender and politics, and elections. She’s a first-rate professor and she’s a first-rate scholar. Her first book, The Devil Is in the Details: Understanding the Causes of Policy Specificity and Ambiguity, was awarded the Herbert A. Simon Book Award in 2018. Her second book is titled The Politics of the Pill. And the third book, a co-edited volume, is titled The Hillary Effect, where she explores Hillary Clinton’s legacy. She is a frequent commentator on KPCC’s Take Two, her writings and commentary have appeared in Talking Points Memo, The Washington Post, US News and World Report, Ms. Magazine, and Time Magazine. So welcome, Rachel. I’ll turn it over to you.

    01:49

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    Thanks so much, Adrian. Thanks for the very kind introduction. We’re really thrilled today to have two truly extraordinary panelists joining us. And I also want to say a quick thank you to everyone who’s joining us from across the country. So thank you.

    So, I first want to introduce A’shanti Gholar. She is the president of Emerge, which is a really important organization dedicated to recruiting and training democratic women who want to run for office. She’s a nationally recognized political strategist and has many years of experience as a grassroots organizer and activist for women, communities of color and progressive causes. A’shanti was recently named one of “She the People’s” 20 for 2020, a list of women of color in politics who played an impactful role in the 2020 elections. She’s also the founder of the Brown Girl’s Guide to Politics which was named one of the top podcasts to prepare people for the 2020 election by Marie Claire. Thank you so much for being here, A’shanti. Thank you.

    I also wanted to introduce Natalie Masuoka who is an associate professor of political science and Asian American Studies at UCLA. She is the author of two award-winning books. The first, The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and Immigration, examines how and why different racial and ethnic groups view immigrants and immigration in different ways. Her second book, Multiracial Identity and Racial Politics in the United States, explores the rise of Americans who self-identify as mixed race or multiracial, and how this impacts politics. She has also co-authored policy reports on the 2020 election focusing on civil rights, voting rights, and voters of color.

    So to get us started off today, I want to ask a question that I think a lot of us think about every time there’s election, which is, what was different this time? And as those of us who have been doing this for a while, A’shanti and Natalie, I know this is not your first time to the rodeo. You also know that sometimes what pundits may say is different, is actually the function of long-threaded phenomenon that you have learned about and practiced over the years. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what was different about this particular election. And also, what are maybe some of the underlying factors that have been building for a while that shaped that outcome? So Natalie, could you get us started off?

    04:20
    Natalie Masuoka:
    Thank you, everyone, for inviting me here today. It’s always exciting to talk and listen to various different college communities, so thank you for having me. So Rachel, I think this is a really important question and this is one that we talk a lot about in all of our classes. We teach political science, which is to what extent, and a lot of times we have college students, it’s the first time that they’re voting, so a lot of things seem new. And I think some of the things that we want to do in our classes is to historicize, contextualize and to discuss to what extent these things really are truly, really unique, or to what extent they’re really situated in history. So this is a really useful question to start off with.

    The first thing that I want to say is that one of the most striking things about this past election was really, of course, what has made the headlines, which was the high rates of turnout. And we saw, recognized, a turnout for various different groups, and I’m sure this panel can talk about specific groups. Looking at some of the work that I’ve done on Asian American communities, the growth between 2016 and 2020 was a little over a million voters. The last report that I saw from API Vote, they recorded a growth of over 4 million voters. So it’s just amazing, it’s been amazing to read about how this election activated, inspired and incorporated so many more Americans than we saw from the last election, but also, I think, historic election. This is a real historical moment to see how many Americans cast their ballot and tried to make their voice known both at the federal level and the national level.

    The other point that I wanted to make is also historicize it. One of the things here that I think was really important to know, which is, in some ways, a concern we’ve always had, but interestingly one that the media was really highlighting, which is really voter equity, and ensuring voting rights for communities of color in the United States. And we have had, unfortunately, a long-standing history where communities of color have been denied access to the ballot box, the power of their vote has been diminished over time, is one of the most important things that happened with the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which was to ensure that communities of color’s vote was protected, and the power of the vote was ensured. Unfortunately, in 2013 with the ruling of Shelby County v Holder, a lot of the various different components of the Voting Rights Act were ruled unconstitutional and effectively not applicable in today’s world. And so what we’re seeing now is an era of a rollback of voting rights. And so, while 2020 isn’t necessarily the first year since the Shelby County v Holder decision which was 2013, I think what we’re seeing here is a lot of the progression that has allowed state localities to make their own decisions, which, unfortunately, has resulted oftentimes in individualized or localized decisions of how electioneering, how folks can cast their vote. And I think that we’ve seen, unfortunately, some rollbacks here in ensuring minority access. What I do think is unique here, in what happened is that I think we talked about it at a higher rate than I think what we’ve seen in the past. I think it was really interesting to see the media, highlight voting access issues, voting rights issues, it was definitely a dominant for the conversation. I was asked in many various different occasions this election to talk about voting rights which I think is important. It’s unfortunate, of course, this is something that we’re talking about in 2020, especially since the Voting Rights Act was 1965. But I do think it’s meaningful that it is a part of our public conversation.

    08:57

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    I think that’s such an important point. And I think the idea that this is a long-standing issue of voter suppression is not new, but that the 2013 ruling was so impactful, and that with this election, there seemed to be an increased awareness. It’s really a key takeaway. A’shanti?

    A’shanti Gholar:
    So there’s two things that I talked about that I don’t think a lot of people are talking about. And the main thing that was different with this election with the candidates is campaigning during COVID, campaigning during an unprecedented pandemic. At Emerge we focus on recruiting and training women to run for office. So literally everything that we had taught them about how to do field, how to fundraise, got turned upside down. So you had to learn, how do you even run an effective campaign during this environment? And this impacted everybody that was running for office. So this wasn’t just, “Oh, there are storms in this part of the country,” or “There’s rolling power outages.” Everyone had to adjust to how do you reach voters during this time. I think that’s something that we have to take into account with the fact that we had a record number of Americans still turn out to vote, that people still effectively were able to reach people in the middle of a pandemic, when we know a lot of people don’t even have access to home internet, which is an inequality that we saw front and center that a lot of us knew existed, a lot of us wanted to ignore. But people were still able to reach voters and voters were still finding a way to tune in and learn who these candidates are. And I think that is something that we actually have to recognize, how people were able to modify their entire campaign. But in this case, when you do run for office, you have to modify your life, but you are modifying your life in a way that you didn’t even anticipate. And this had a huge impact on women candidates in particular. We saw so many of our women who actually decided not to run for office because they had to take care of the kids or they became the primary caregiver in the family for older parents, or they became the only one who had a job. So even when we’re talking about politics and women leaving the workforce and everything, it has impacted women who have run for office.

    A second piece of this is we talk about how much money was spent during this election cycle. A lot of money was on low dollar donations. The fact that we are in the middle of this pandemic, a lot of people are suffering financially, and they still managed to give $2, $5, $25 to these candidates. When you look at Act Blue, which is a fundraising platform, that makes it easy for any individual to give to Democratic campaigns, they had a record-breaking year, and their average contribution size was $32. So it goes to show you, too, that it wasn’t just about casting that vote, people wanted to make sure that they were matching it with their money. That’s how seriously they were taking it. The fact that that $5, that $10, for a lot of people, that meant that they were skipping a meal. But they knew that they needed to help this campaign, that they needed to have their voice heard. So between how the candidates were able to campaign to reach these voters, and the fact that voters, many who were suffering financially, still managed to give to campaigns. I think that’s something that we need to be talking about more, just how individual voters were so engaged during this time. And people ask me, who is the real winner this election cycle? And I say it’s democracy because we saw it truly play out. And what happens when people really get involved and engaged in what is happening with our government.

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    I’m so appreciative that you brought up the context of COVID. On one level, it should be obvious, and yet I feel like I’ve seen discussions of decisions to do less door knocking, for example, that failed to mention that decision was made because there’s a pandemic and that’s a consideration of public health that’s very important. I’m also really glad that you mentioned how we think about COVID as a universal problem on one level but as you noted, impacts people in different ways. So you have women candidates or potential candidates who choose not to run because of caretaking duties, which I think is another level that we may not see right away, but it’s going to have ripple effects unless we address it head on. Adrian, did you want to add any points to this?

    13:49
    Adrian Pantoja:
    Sure. Well, one of the things, first of all, I was so eager to introduce the panels that I forgot to introduce myself. So I’m a professor of politics here at Pitzer College. I’ve been here since 2006. I got my PhD in 2001 and have been doing political consulting since the mid-1990s and I still do that kind of work today. So a lot of my thoughts are gone not only in the academy, but also in the real world of politics. And so one of the things that for me was (and I’ll ask Rachel the same question) in terms what are the big takeaways; not only are we co-hosting the panel, we’re also going to be answering some of these questions.

    One of the biggest takeaways for me was that 2020 is a turning point in that we’re going to be talking about Latino politics prior to 2020. And we’re going to be talking about Latino politics after 2020. And so if I contextualize Latino politics in terms of this long historical process, there really are two key dates for us to keep in mind. The first one is 1960. And that’s the first time Latinos were mobilized to have an impact in electoral politics. They were mobilized by organizers that called themselves the Viva Kennedy clubs. And this Viva Kennedy generation really wanted to mobilize Latinos, specifically in Texas, to help Kennedy win the presidency. And since 1960, in every single presidential election, Latino activists, Latino consultants, political leaders, have really been trying to highlight the importance of Latino voters. But it isn’t until this election that I could definitively say, you can’t take this electorate for granted. And so what started in 1960, really, in many ways, the 2020 election is this moment in time in which Latino politics has forever changed. Keep in mind that in 1960, you had a total Latino population of 6.3 million, that’s nationally, 6.3 million Latinos nationally in 1960. In 2020, you had basically about 32 million Latinos that were eligible to vote. So Latinos were the largest nonwhite voting bloc in this election. Based on some estimates in terms of turnout, Natalie and others have already alluded to the high rates and A’shanti has alluded to the high rates of turnout. It’s estimated that about 16 to 19 million Latinos voted in this election. So prior to the November election day, we were really looking at 11 states that we hoped Latinos could help flip. And I’m not even talking about Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and California, those were already in many ways locked in because of Latino voters. We’re talking about 11 other states where Latinos could flip those states, and out of those 11 states, about six of those essentially flipped from 2016 to 2020. When we think of Latinos, we think of them in Florida, we think of them in the southwest, but I’ll give you an example here. In Wisconsin, there’s over 300,000 eligible Latino voters; in Michigan, close to 300,000, in Georgia, close to 400,000 Latino eligible voters. So when we talk about the Latino electorate, it’s no longer about these specific states, really we’re talking about a national phenomenon. So for me, the 2020 takeaway really is about the importance of this electorate. And it’s an electorate that’s here to stay and its part of the American political landscape.

    Rachel, what are what are some takeaways? You’ve been doing politics for a long time as well. So what’s different about 2020?

    17:56
    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    Well, I think to thread together a lot of what you guys have said, to me, what’s striking is the resilience demonstrated by voters and organizations up against a lot of the dimensions that you’ve talked about. So you’re talking about widespread voter suppression, a global pandemic, and also another dimension that I think we need to recognize, which is a sitting president who is actively campaigning against the very idea of democracy in really explicit ways. Now, this is not the first time we’ve struggled with the health of our democracy before. But this is a striking moment where the President was in very concrete and repeated ways, saying that voting didn’t matter, saying that he intended to stay in some ways no matter what, and finding ways to delegitimize the process. And of course, we’re watching that play out even now. And yet, given those three dimensions, voter suppression, the pandemic, the President attempting to delegitimize the process, you still saw this incredible turnout. And really, as you have mentioned, turnout among some of the most marginalized groups. Asian Americans, Latinos, African American voters, there were these really striking stories of Indigenous populations turning out. So some of you watching may have seen the video of the Navajo Nation riding on horseback to turn out. I think you do see, as we’ll get to later, this doesn’t mean that all that these problems are solved, but rising up of voters, who in some ways had not only the most to lose, but had also been mistreated the most by this sort of system in a lot of ways, and their turnout in order to both support a particular candidate in a lot of cases, but also to really support the process, I think was something worth really taking note of.

    So thinking about, in addition to what we make of this election in terms of what was striking or surprising, but also, what the impact is, I would love to ask you guys, when you think of why this election mattered, not just for who turned out, but also for what it says about democracy or voting groups or policy moving forward, what is the thing that you think matters the most for why this election was significant? A’shanti? Do you want to get us started?

    A’shanti Gholar:
    Absolutely. So with my Guide to Politics, our season that we just wrapped, focused on the election. And in the intro I said, this election is going to decide are we going to be a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy or are we going to be an authoritarian regime? And for me it was really that simple. And we know that as a country, we are pretty divided on which one that we want it to be. But we know now because GSA is finally letting the transition happen, that we officially, officially, for like the 12th time, do have President-Elect Joe Biden, Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris. And I think that’s something that we’re really going to have to grapple with, the fact that there were 70 million people that were okay with the past four years. But that did not surprise me. I had told people from the beginning that this race was tied, and they’re like, “No, no! Look at the polls, look at everything!” I’m like, “This race is tight.” And they would ask me why? And I said, because they’re real people. There will be people that will go into that voting booth. And they will say, is he racist? Yes. Is he sexist? Yes. Has our foreign standing gone down? Yes. Could the country, could everything be better? Yes. But am I okay? Is my family okay? Will I survive another four years of this? Yes. And that allowed them to check the box for him.

    And it’s really that simple, that so many, 70 million people, were fine with that. So when we look overall, the fact that they’re still going to be challenges ahead over the next four years, even just a month now after election day, the fact that we’re still trying to get the transition going, there’s a lot that has to be dissected. And there’s also the conversation now about the fact that there can be another Donald Trump. We know that he’s talking about running in 2024 again, but even if he doesn’t, we have to realize the fact that our country will elect people like him, but the next person is going to be a lot smarter. And that is a lot scarier than what we’ve had over the past four years. And this is also why state and local level races are important, which is something that we focus on at Emerge. Particularly we saw with our alums, they were the first line of defense against everything that was coming down federally, particularly this summer with all of the racial injustice, and making sure that you cannot just concentrate on the White House every four years. That is, the state and local offices that really have the biggest impact on people’s lives, and making sure that we have elected officials in there who are responding to our everyday needs, because that’s going to be the best way that we are going to be able to come back when we do have another fascist in the White House.

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    Thank you, A’shanti. Natalie, what are your thoughts?

    23:35
    Natalie Masuoka:
    You know, what’s really interesting, I think, about this election, especially in context of the historical elections, is really how powerful our partisan allegiances are. I’ve been working on a book with my longtime co-author, Jane Junn, who’s on the faculty at USC. And we’ve been looking at women voting, women voters in presidential elections and to what extent women support Democrats versus Republicans over time. And so, one of the long-standing things that we get locked into as political scientists, this idea of the gender gap, which is the idea that women are more likely to vote Democratic than men. One of the things that we argue, it’s one of the problems actually we argue, is that often creates this prototype or stereotype that women are therefore Democrats, which is actually not necessarily the right logic to proceed from the gender gap. That actually if you look at women and look at them disaggregated by race, you’d actually find that there’s a pretty important distinction partisanship-wise in women, which is that women of color overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates and white women have, in majority, voted and supported the Republican candidate for all elections except for two since 1960, those two being 1964 for Lyndon B. Johnson, which was an overwhelming landslide for the Democratic candidate, and a slight, a very, very slight majority for Bill Clinton in his second term. And so we see this long standing pattern where white women have been an overwhelming majority Republican vote. And so one of the things here that we were often asked in this election is, is this going to be the election that you would see white women, instead of being a majority Republican electorate, that they would actually vote more so for Biden? You point to things like the Coronavirus, various different evidence of various different gender issues, that perhaps the Democratic candidate would be more likely to support over the Republican candidate. And I think when we were saying it could be the case, but now that we’ve looked at the actual outcomes for the election is that we can see that in many ways, the historical trend is maintained quite steadily, and that we see that there’s the same trend where we find the same relatively same, similar share of white women who supported a Republican, persisted in 2020. It’s not that much different from 2016, 2016 was not that much different from 2008, 2008 was not that much different from 2004. And so, in many ways, this is a very historic trend and I think we do look at this, this thing is seen as really unique, and what was going on is unique. But a lot of these trends really suggest that how important partisanship is, how much we do stay, in many ways, and on the aggregate, still see very similar trends in terms of supporting Republicans versus Democrats. So I think this is a long standing conversation of thinking about to what extent partisanship really should matter and perhaps thinking forward to what extent we can combat partisanship loyalty and emphasize for Americans some of the other things that perhaps they should be considering when they cast their ballot.

    27:14
    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    I’m so glad you raised that, Natalie. I feel like every time I get interviewed about women and politics, I get that question about, well, women vote all Democratic, right? And it’s like, how much data can we present? So thank you for that. Adrian, what are your thoughts?

    Adrian Pantoja:
    What does this election say about our democracy going forward? I mean, it’s still, A’shanti and Natalie mentioned this, it still shocks me that for a large segment of the electorate, winning is more important than fairness, than equitable outcomes, or access to the polls, and this illustrates that. And yet at the same time, I’m a student of history. How could I not know or not refer back to the post Reconstruction Era and the Deep South when you have highly undemocratic practices that essentially define politics in the American South? And in other parts of the country, but namely, the Deep South that people were fine with excluding large segments of the American electorate, simply because of the color of their skin. And so it highlights the importance of something Natalie brought up in terms of voting rights and access to the polls, and the importance of minority groups who have historically been excluded from politics to be vigilant, to be active, to really fight for their rights to simply access the polls. And maybe I’m just naïve that I think fairness and democracy is more important than winning. And I guess it doesn’t surprise me that for a lot of folks, that’s not necessarily the case. So maybe this election illustrates that point in terms of moving forward and democracy. A’shanti’s correct, we’re going to have new Trump-like candidates that are going to be smarter and more sophisticated and therefore much more of a threat to groups.

    How about you, Rachel? That’s kind of a somber answer. But what do you think in turn?

    29:38
    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    When I think about the impact of this election, obviously there’s a dramatic policy impact. And a lot of that does depend on what happens in the senate race in Georgia, which I know a lot of us are paying very close attention to. But even with just the White House, the agenda that Biden has on a number of policy dimensions is vastly different than Trump. And so when you think about, especially existential crises like the environment, but also issues; reproductive rights, or immigration. There are things that Biden can do in the White House that will take us in a different direction policywise; on DACA, on the global gag rule, on some environmental regulations. So that is front and center in my mind in terms of what will happen now. But the other dimension is really tied into what a lot of you are saying. And I think, as political scientists, and to be honest, I think, race and ethnicity political scientists have been ahead of this for a long time. But in general, political scientists need to fully come to terms with the fact that in America right now, we have two major parties, one of whom, the Republican Party, is actively hostile to democracy. And this isn’t just Trump. This is all of the people, except for a handful of senators, that refuse to acknowledge Biden’s win. And all of the people that were enabling, not just Trump’s policy stances, some of which I do, frankly, think were abhorrent, but all of his arguments against the democratic process and all of his attempts to throw out votes with no evidence, that’s the Republican capital or Republican Party right now.

    And so I think when we’re thinking about how to move forward, structurally, and how to think about saving democracy, one of our responsibilities as scholars, is to be very frank about that, and to talk about not just party polarization which is interesting and important, but also the huge asymmetry in how the parties are approaching democratic governance and what our role in that is. And I also think in terms of what’s going to happen now, a lot does depend on this. This ties into what A’shanti said about state and local races; there’s so much attention to the presidential race in a presidential year as where they should be, especially when you’re running against Trump. But the state and local races have such a dramatic impact on people’s day-to-day lives, and they get so much less attention, particularly after the election cycle is over. So kind of keeping up the energy, both for activists and for scholars to make sure we understand what’s happening in those races, I think is a really important way of thinking about how we process this most recent election.

    So the next thing I’d love to chat about is thinking about, now that we’ve talked about kind of what happened and what it means, what are all of our next steps? And obviously, this can cover so much ground, but when you think about what you most want our participants today to hear, what do you think we should be taking action on to move forward from this election? Natalie, do you want to start us off?

    32:35
    Natalie Masuoka:
    That is a big question. And I think I’ll contextualize my answer in our state and local politics, that you just ended there, Rachel. I think what we had on the ballot in California this year were a lot of various issues, but one very important one, which was Prop 16 and thinking about the reintegration of affirmative action policies in our state. And I think that, while we can see that there is some optimism in terms of our progression towards bettering racial equity in this country with the election of Biden and Harris at the federal level, the results for Prop 16 here in California, in some ways, shows how much we have to go, even in one of the bluest states, you could say the most blue state in the nation here in California. There was a decision at the state amongst California is a state electorate, to continue the elimination of affirmative action. I think it was unfortunate, but I think that it speaks to how much of a battle we still have ahead of us in terms of changing the narrative of the importance of various different racially redistributive policies in the United States. And I think that California, as it’s always been a bellwether state, that I think that there is still a lot of racial conservativism in this country, including among some communities of color, that I think as educators, we should take this very seriously and thinking about why that happened. What is our role in terms of changing that narrative and really deeply understanding where Californians were they made that decision? And so I think that this is definitely something that I personally want to think about, and what I’m challenging our students to think about is how we can generate more racial progressive, original progressive orientation to our policies over the next few years.

    35:29
    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    It’s interesting to think about going from Prop 187, which initially restricted all these programs to this moment when they’re sort of being reinforced in some ways after Prop 16. And a lot of times I talk to my students about California politics, I say, there’s like this hopeful version that Prop 187 passed, and that was so devastating. And yet there was this uprising and a lot of ways of Latino community and look how far we’ve come, and a lot of ways around discussions of inclusion and immigration. And yet when you give that example, it also reminds us of the road yet to travel, and how some of those divisions are still being kind of reinforced. A’shanti?

    A’shanti Gholar:
    So for me, I’m always for looking after every election, despite the outcome. And I’m just really excited about this new generation of organizers and activists because they are the next generation of elected leaders, and they represent the new American majority. So they’re Black, Brown, Indigenous, they’re young woman, they’re unmarried woman, they’re LGBTQ. And that excites me because that means that we’re getting closer and closer to not only having a representative democracy, but an inclusive democracy. And when we talk about the policies that we want to see, particularly for communities of color, that means that we have to have people from those communities at the table. And I just can’t wait to see them all run for office. Even when we look at a lot of the candidates that were truly exciting in 2020, they were members of the new American majority, having the first Indigenous woman on the Portland, Maine City Council, the first countywide Indigenous woman in Arizona, the first Latinas elected, the first Asian women elected. And I love the list of firsts that we have, because those women are trailblazers, but I always tell people what bothers me is that we still have it. But that’s just the example, the fact that we still have so far to go, particularly for women. This year, we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, but the fact is, that was only 100 years for some women, it was not 100 years for all women. For Black, Brown, and Indigenous women, we’re still playing catch up. So that’s why when you see it as taking these seeds, the question shouldn’t really be “Well, what took so long?”, is the fact that we are here. And we are really owning our political power. I’m really excited to see how that plays out. And then another part of this, too, is holding elected officials accountable, that you just can’t show up and vote them in, you’ve got to make sure that they’re doing the things that they said that they were going to do. And this is something I talk about all the time; yes, I work to get more women elected. And yes, I want you to hold them accountable as well, because that is what being a good elected official is. So those are really two important things, I think, to pay attention to. We just had the biggest voter turnout in the history of our country. How do we keep it going? How do we keep people engaged? And how are we holding these elected officials accountable so that we don’t go back, that we go forward?

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    Thank you, A’shanti. Adrian, what are your thoughts?

    38:54
    Adrian Pantoja:
    In terms of next steps, one of the things that I’m going to, as a pollster consultant, I’m going to be looking at very carefully at how the Republican Party reacts to this loss. And in particular, how their strategy going forward is one that is not going to seek to win the Latino vote or Asian American voters, but to win enough of them to deny Democrats a victory. And I think that’s one where we’re just going to be watching those numbers very carefully. One of the things that surprised me, and I’ll speak about this right now, there’s been a number of stories about the number of men that supported Trump, Latino men in particular, there’s a gender gap in terms of Latino men. But in our own polling, we saw that the reason why Latino men were backing Trump at such high rates was because the Trump campaign was contacting them. He was micro-targeting men and so he didn’t run dumb campaign, he was definitely targeting the right kind of people with the right kind of messages. So that’s something I’m going to be looking for in the future and we’ll see how it plays out.

    Rachel, what do you think about, what are some things to look forward to?

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    When you think about next steps, a lot of what I think about is engagement. And one thing I’m very mindful of, is Trump is in the White House because of the Electoral College. But he got as many votes as he did, in part because of this constant, corrosive message around politics and governance as negative, which allows for someone who is truly destructive to amass power. Because if everything in politics is toxic, if everything in politics is dirty, then I think it’s easier for someone who is truly malicious in the way that Trump is, to rise to the top in that conversation. So to me, one of the most important things that we can do as professors and organizers, and especially folks who want to support younger people getting engaged, is to help them find their path to engagement that is not just throwing up your hands, the whole system is corrupt. And that includes recognizing the parts of the system that are very much not working. But it also includes supporting finding what avenue you want to be involved in, supporting what avenue is meaningful to you. And that can run the gamut. A good friend talks about time, treasure and talent and those can be applied to policy or to elections, or to scholarship or to media. But I think finding that particular avenue, and especially to echo some of the points that were made earlier, for communities of color to be supported in that engagement. One thing I’m really mindful of, some of my work looks at media coverage. And I think if you look at tracing both Trump’s rise and sort of assessing the damage, I think reporters of color were always 10 steps ahead in seeing this happening because they understood the dimensions in ways that white reporters did not. And so I think making sure that that the academy and candidates and newsrooms are really as diverse as possible is an important next step that we all need to think about ways to support.

    So I think now we have a few minutes for questions. Carlos, can you help us out by calling them folks?

    42:33
    Carlos Alvarez:
    Yes, folks, you can either write your question in the chat or unmute yourselves if you have any question for our panelists. today.

    Adrian Pantoja:
    It’s harder for me to read so if you unmute yourself and ask your question, that would be great. It’s a small, nice, intimate group, so feel free to ask a question.

    Carlos Alvarez:
    We have a raised hand, Becca, feel free to unmute yourself.

    42:56
    Becca:
    Thank you so much. This has been a really engaging and interesting conversation. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot is reforming the way that we run campaigns. And historically, a lot of the conversation around campaign reform has been campaign finance reform. But with this disinformation cycle and the way that media was used throughout this campaign, what are the priorities for how we should be restructuring how our elections and campaigns work now, and how have they changed in the pandemic?

    43:37
    Adrian Pantoja:
    A’shanti, she’s the expert of the campaign.

    A’shanti Gholar:
    I’ll go ahead and start. So I think the biggest piece is with the media. They focus more on the national campaigns. It’s the White House, it’s Congress, that’s where their biggest influence is, because that’s where they can have the 24-hour news cycle. When we look at the entire picture of elected offices in this country, there’s 520,000 elected offices. So that’s 520,000 people that get to shape our lives with the swipe of their pen. We need to be paying more attention to the state and local, as I mentioned. When it comes to campaigning, with a lot of these seats, you don’t need that much money to actually win at all. There are some seats where you can raise $10,000, $25,000 and at Emerge, we teach our women how to do it. And those seats are 100% winnable. It goes back to do you have candidates who are running for those seats? In a lot of these seats, people continue to get reelected cycle after cycle because no one is running, and no one is paying attention from their constituency. So that’s when they wake up one day and the schools are deteriorated. The roads are awful because no one’s engaged. So this money piece, yes, it is something that is a big piece of politics, but particularly when we look at women candidates, people of color candidates, it is a hurdle that they are able to overcome. And in my opening, the reason why I talked about the small dollar donations is because I firmly see that when we pull together small dollar donations, the 1% billionaires can’t have anything on the people. And that’s just hands down. Our alums, they beat these candidates who have twice as much money, three times as much money as them. They’re getting funded, out-funded, three to one, five to one, and they’re still able to win, just because of those small dollar donations and what they are able to do with an effective message. So overall, for me, it’s we have to reshape the money conversation about politics because it’s only at a certain level, is not at all levels. And when people get engaged and know that their $5 can actually help win a campaign, that’s when we’re going to start to see that transformation when it’s just not about casting your vote, but also having the ability to even put a few dollars behind a candidate; that plays a big factor and how we start to see different candidates in office.

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    I’ll just add to that, you know, there’s a lot that is very frustrating about money in politics. But just to piggyback off of A’shanti’s point, there actually is not good evidence in political science that more money wins elections, it’s much more complicated than that. And a lot of times, we pay attention to the most expensive races and sort of use that as a way to assess what money does in politics. And as A’shanti noted, for lower ticket races, many of which have huge potential to impact people’s lives, money isn’t really the biggest story, or at least not in the way that we often think it is. So I think helping to kind of problematize that conversation would help us engage more folks.

    Adrian Pantoja:
    Other questions that we have, or Natalie, do you want to add something?

    Natalie Masuoka:
    No, I think we have plenty of questions so we can keep going.

    47:20
    Carlos Alvarez:
    The next one is a set of three questions, actually. Where do you see the trajectory of Trumpism? How do we simultaneously work through bipartisanship if the GOP values are intrinsically against our goals? And how do you see Biden as slightly left of center, create coalitions on the far left and appease moderates on the right? We can go back after.

    Adrian Pantoja:
    Let me try tackling that one a little bit because I see another question about a divided Congress. And so with victory now comes governing and that is, what is Biden’s agenda? Rachel’s excited about his agenda. The question is, how much is he able to get through Congress and of course, we still have some Senate races that need to be determined. So those are pivotal to that outcome. I think for me, one of the roles that I will, that I hope to play, would be one where I could advise the Republican Party in saying, “Look, if you want to make inroads and broaden your coalition to communities of color, then it’s in your interest to support particular policies. There may be some policies where you can get this bipartisan support and therefore, you can each claim a victory there and use that to campaign effectively.” Again, maybe I’m being naïve, and maybe that old partisanship is now dead, because the parties are so polarized at this moment. And one party in particular has moved very far to the right. So maybe bridging that is going to be too challenging, but at least for me, the goal would be to try to convince the Republican Party that there are certain policies that makes sense for you to support because they’re the most salient policies among your constituents. But if you want to broaden your base, they would probably get some support in terms of campaigning to these potential voters.

    49:35

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    Natalie, did you have any additional thoughts on that question?

    Natalie Masuoka:
    I guess more broadly on going to the general concept of Trump and Trumpism. I think what’s really interesting that we’ve lived through the last four years is really, you could argue in some ways, that changing nature, the way that we talk about race, that historically in the research, we have traced after the Civil Rights period is that race is oftentimes talked about more indirectly, there’s a lot of indirect references or visual references that in this kind of idea of trying to embrace this norm of equality, that there’s really a more of a preference to indirectly talk about race or make allusions to it. I think what Trump showed is to what extent Americans are still, a good section of America, is still very much willing to have these explicit attacks, I guess you could say, against communities of color, and that perhaps, the academy and our emphasis on going to these indirect references or implicit references really have not been properly capturing the changing or non-changing course, as it would be how Americans have thought about and wanted to just discuss about race. So I think what Trump has really pushed us to is to think about to what extent our race relations in the way of our national issues, which are the culture of talking about race, is going to, in many ways, reshift back to what we were more likely to hear before the Civil Rights Movement, or to what extent it will take a very different distinctive form in reflection of what has happened.

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    Thank you. So Adrian, I know you had one closing question for us.

    51:47
    Adrian Pantoja:
    Sure. Sadly, we’re running out of time. But Rachel and A’shanti, any thoughts on just very quickly, like quick thoughts on this Trumpism and polar political polarization? That’s a really good question. In terms of passing, making any policies, what are some quick thoughts on that?

    A’shanti Gholar:
    Yeah. And I’ve been talking about this a lot with Trumpism, particularly with this kind of question. [Sorry, it’s eight o’clock over here. I’ve been up since 6 a.m.] Presumably, what this question is, the trajectory is going to be how far the Republican Party will let it go. We already know that Trump has said that he wants to see Ronna McDaniel stay as the head of the RNC. So as long as they allow him to be the head of the Republican Party as the leader, and allow him to call the shots, that is going to continue to be their trajectory of the Republican Party and Trumpism. Are they going to let him be that leader? And if the answer is yes, then Trumpism is going to be around for a long time, even when he’s out of office; it’s not going to immediately go away. But the staying power of it will really be determined by if the Republican Party continues to let him be the figurehead. And that is going to really hurt bipartisanship. And I think a lot of these are Republican senators could have done a lot better job, I don’t think saying how much you dislike him behind closed doors matters. If they continue to be scared of him, what he’s going to do, then there’s not going to be a lot done. But I don’t think that falls on the Biden-Harris administration because we know they’re absolutely going to try. President-Elect Biden, he has a history of working across the aisle, it’s going to really be on the Republican Party that they won’t let us move forward. And I actually just find that really upsetting.

    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    Yeah, and I think tying those, both of those points, that Trumpism is a direct function of racism, right? I think we really are coming to terms with that in a way that I worried after the 2016 election, there was all this focus on sort of economic anxiety, and then just the data bears out really clearly that racism has to be addressed if we’re going to figure out how Trumpism happened. And relatedly to all the points of making this entire conversation, we cannot fix what ails democracy unless we treat racial injustice head on. So I think any attempt to resist Trumpism has to be grounded in the work we’re doing and anti-racism. I just think they go hand in hand with.

    54:28
    Adrian Pantoja:
    That’s a great perspective, Rachel. One final question just to wrap this up. And that is, all four of us have been doing politics for a long time, politics must be in our blood, otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this business, whether it’s academia or as practitioners. But yet there’s some young people out there that are discouraged, that think that politics doesn’t matter. They feel alienated or estranged from this system. Trump’s rhetoric has also seeped into the left as well as Democrats that they feel like yeah, it’s all toxic, it’s all corrupt. What advice would you give to young people in terms of why politics matters?

    55:08
    Rachel VanSickle-Ward:
    I think the first thing to think about for those who have separate hard losses is, it’s a marathon and not a sprint. So if you look at the activists that have been with us, some of them we just lost like John Lewis, or someone who were there to witness, they will frequently tell you that the losses are brutal, but that you get back up, dust yourself off, and you look toward the next fight. So I think part of thinking about the long arc can be helpful. I also think it’s really important to ground yourself in what you’re fighting for. And this might seem kind of obvious, but I think especially in thinking about the Trump era, understandably, a lot of us were thinking about how to stop the pain and how to remove the threats, which is important and valid. But it can also be really exhausting if you sort of live in that space all the time. And so one thing that I find really helpful, and I’ve learned a lot from my students who are very engaged, is think about the thing that you love. So is that a candidate that you get motivated by; is it an issue that you’re passionate about? Is it an aspect of the work that you really care about, or even people that you love that you’re fighting to protect from the threat? And I think if you live in that space, it can give you more energy to withstand the losses, which are very brutal, but also help you think about kind of the long-term perspective.

    56:29
    Adrian Pantoja:
    A’shanti, Natalie, what advice would you give?

    A’shanti Gholar:
    Like Rachel, you have to sense that “why” – that’s what I also tell our candidates is, you have to know why you wake up every day, and you want to do this, and that everyone does have a place in politics. For me, I grew up watching C-SPAN, found it one day, you could not turn the TV off when I was watching television with my mom, and I didn’t see a lot of people that looked like me. So I didn’t even know if I had a role in politics. And it was because of a great government teacher who got me involved, and other women who saw things in myself that I didn’t see that I’m here today. I came to the Emerge network in 2006 as a co-founder of Emerge Nevada. And if you would have told me that in 2020, I’d be the organization’s first Black woman president, I literally would have laughed at you. But you have to trust the process and that you will end up where you’re supposed to be. And along the way, it will be hard, it will be difficult. It is not all sunshine, rainbows and lollipops. Even I have days when I wake up, I’m like, look, I’m over this. I’m about to go work at Sephora, just try on makeup all day, live my best life. But I remember my “why.” And we all have something to contribute, if that’s your $5 donation, if that’s running for office, and that’s being a campaign manager, we each have a role to play in this democracy.

    Adrian Pantoja:
    Natalie?

    57:59
    Natalie Masuoka:
    I’ll return back to my original comments about both voter suppression and the battle to fight voter suppression to bring awareness, to identify specific localities in violation, are really attributed to everyday voters, us as individual watchdogs, making sure that we’re doing our part and calling attention to these various different acts of injustice, that this isn’t necessarily just about our institutions, covering and ensuring the right vote, this is this is our responsibility. And I think in many ways voting rights was protected this year, this past year, because there was so much public vigilance to protect the right to vote. And so in that way, we, in all our little ways, do our part, even in the ways of just taking pictures, calling attention, talking about it on your social media, for you to realize really what kind of impact this really made for our election this year.

    Adrian Pantoja:
    Well, thank you, everyone. I’d like to thank all our guests, Professor VanSickle-Ward, Natalie Matsuoka, A’shanti Gholar, for joining us today in this amazing conversation where we analyzed the 2020 election. There’ll be lots of books, lots of articles, lots of op-ed pieces, analyzing and re-analyzing this election. I hope our conversation has stimulated and piqued your interest in politics. And I look forward to ongoing conversations in the classroom and in future panels. So thank all our guests. Thank you to the Racial Justice Initiative and Pitzer College. Have a good evening, everyone.