What Now?

11/6/20 - As we await final results, we share our election week feels and discuss some of the racist scams that undergird the American electoral system - like the Electoral College itself - with Heather McGhee, author of the forthcoming book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Plus, the local gains, newly minted officials and old timers (like Nebraska's Ernie Chambers) who are giving us hope.

Transcript below.

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CREDITS

Executive Producer: Gina Delvac

Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn

Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.

Producer: Jordan Bailey

Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed

Merch Director: Caroline Knowles

Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci

Design Assistant: Brijae Morris

Ad sales: Midroll

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TRANSCRIPT: WHAT NOW?

[Ads]

Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.

Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.

Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.

Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.

Aminatou: Hi Ann Friedman!

Ann: Hi Aminatou Sow. [Laughs]

Aminatou: How's it going?

Ann: Rude question but I'll take it. [Laughs]

Aminatou: Only here for the rude questions.

Ann: I don't know! I mean, yeah, actually I'm just going to leave it at that. I don't know said in a semi-plaintive wail is really the only way for me to answer that question right now. What's happening over there?

Aminatou: I mean . . . [Laughs] What's not happening over there? This week has been so strange for me because I have not been feeling well at all and there's apparently we're waiting on results from the presidential election in the background of that, so it's funny to be . . .

Ann: Wait, are you waiting for something? [Laughs]

Aminatou: Listen, I'm just trying to wade through my own personal crisis so it's just, you know, who knows? By the time this podcast comes out it is probable that we will still not know who won the election which we were prepared for because for the past couple months this is all anyone has been telling us and yet it's an excruciating wait at the same time.

[Theme Song]

(2:22)

Ann: Yeah. And I actually feel like in some ways that's the theme of this week, that I could read things about what was probably going to happen -- and I'm not talking about polls because those should all burn -- but the uncertainty, the fact it would be a close race, the fact that all of this stuff was accurately forecast, like all of the kind of confusion and delays. I would say what was not accurately forecast is how I would feel seeing the returns come in. And not in the sense I thought Kentucky or Alabama was going to go blue or something like that but just this feeling of knowing millions and millions of people voted to double down on this president's agenda made me sadder than I ever anticipated it would.

Aminatou: Whew, you can say that for the both of us.

Ann: Yeah.

Aminatou: Because it's one thing to know it; it's a completely other thing to see it reflected back at you on a ginormous electoral map on TV.

Ann: Right.

Aminatou: And to just like visceral . . . you know? And to also start to understand the scale of it. You're like oh, there are states and states worth of people who really have very different outcomes they care about. That's my most generous way of putting that. This week has been interesting because I have to confess that I have not been paying attention, like glued to the TV like I would any other time, and part of that is truly I feel like garbage and part of that is I literally cannot do that to myself right now. I've been thinking just a lot about 2016 and how awful the election day was or the end of election day. It's only now that I'm fully understanding just how viscerally painful that was and so part of not being glued to the TV is that -- and at the same time I just . . . I think that the transformation that I've gone through these past four years as someone who cares a lot about politics is instead of just really reading the news and absorbing it and reading polls and absorbing them or whatever I find myself very humbled. Like 2016 really humbled me into understanding that I do not understand who American voters are and this time around it's the same thing. It's just like okay, like the polls said, like this one thing, we were going to have a landslide. I did not believe that for one second.

Ann: Me neither.

(5:08)

Aminatou: Not because I'm a genius or because I know anything but really it's because I've been burned once. [Laughs] It's like sorry, I'm still operating on 2016 PTSD. And also it is a good thing to be skeptical of polling because if we all listened to polling then no one would show up the way they're supposed to show up. If you just believe that Democrats are going to win in a landslide what's the point of doing all the door knocking and the calling and the whatever we've been doing because the election is preordained? But at the same time it's just very humbling to be like oh, we don't know anything at all and so I'm finding myself very dismayed watching the TV or reading the news from people who act like they are very certain and sure about things because no one could've predicted what happened this time around. I am having my own personal crisis of what information can I trust and what matters and what doesn't matter? So it is truly part of me being this subdued is that, is like I don't know what's happening and because I don't know I'm just going to shut up and watch it unfold.

(6:20)

Ann: Ugh. It's really a lot of that really resonates with me and one thing that I've been reflecting on in my ample hours away from the television is how I think some of my own understanding of what it means for me to participate in politics, like this kind of electrical politics specifically -- we're not talking about movement work or the long game but the mechanics of who is elected to make laws. And I think for a long time in the past and probably up to 2016 for me a big part of that was follow along and be up-to-date on what's happening. And there was always a component of it that was like write letters or do canvasing or something like that but there was a big component that was like I'm someone who's up-to-date on who's running and what their platforms are and what the grand scope is of how many seats do we stand to win or lose or whatever? There's been a real shift in my own behavior where I think partly as a response to some of the feelings you're describing about 2016 I was like okay, I am going to schedule in my active time for fundraising or phone banking or text banking or all of these things we've talked about on the show. I'm going to set a kind of end date for that, like for me Monday was like okay, I'm going to do my last actions on Monday then Tuesday is the day I'm just going to stop, you know?

And I really realize how much since 2016 my world of how do I engage in electoral politics has just been reduced to I'm going to do what I can and then I am not -- I don't know, maybe I'm just kind of . . . I don't want to say it's a giving up on the immediate results end of things but it doesn't feel like a good use of what is an increasingly limited store of hope and energy that I have, right? To put it into the tea leaves reading or the poll parsing or the returns minute-by-minute.

(8:10)

Aminatou: Humbled really is how I feel, like it's not some bullshit like oh, humility. Truly I'm just like oh yeah, there's a lot that I do not know and I clearly don't know -- I don't know who the American voter is and how this country works and why people make the electoral decisions that they do. It is just mind-blowing to watch a Democratic candidate win so much of the popular vote and also we are losing seats in the House. [Laughs] How does that work? Or to see the media really obsess about "minority voting patterns" but still not understand who those minorities are.

Ann: Right.

Aminatou: You know, to really lump in all -- you know, like the mood the other day was like ugh, Hispanic voters gave Trump Texas and they also gave Trump Miami-Dade and everyone is mad at that. Then the next day it's like oh, Hispanic voters also saved the day in Maricopa County. So I'm like is . . . 

Ann: Yeah.

Aminatou: Or to have people fret about the number of African-American votes that have shifted towards Trump. I'm like we're talking an order of magnitude that is still much smaller than the tens of millions of white people who routinely vote frankly for racist policies. So the whole thing is just very -- it's just very fascinating to me. I don't quite know how to feel. But I will say being invested in my own community and the outcomes of my own community, that has really been a balm, you know? And yeah, because like you I was very much like oh, gotta know about every single race. Like what's going on in that one special race in Georgia? What's going on in Maine? How are we going to get that one Nebraska electoral college vote? And those things are like yes, please know all of those things but it's very different knowing them than being very invested in what's going on in the part of the world where I can actually have some influence.

(10:15)

And I don't know, Ann. I don't know truly is -- that is my feeling. I'm like I do not know and I feel so okay not knowing. I feel really okay not knowing. What I'm not okay with is being surrounded by people who pretend that they know anything at all because that is getting us in a lot of trouble.

Ann: Yeah. And I also echo your feelings about as I think about where I've invested my time and my money and my resources in the past several months leading up to this election what I felt best about in real-time and what I feel best about now was the super local phone banking I did for ballot initiatives, for city council candidates, for statewide ballot props that were doing great things. You're very right that the level of both real-time satisfaction I felt, like being on the phone banking call and being like "Oh yeah, these are actual community organizers in my community and we're just in a Google Doc" as opposed to trying to figure out a big, arcane, Democratic Party Slack channel or something. Like not going to name state names but I did have some not-positive experiences doing big machine politics kind of phone banking or texting. [Laughs] It's something I don't feel like I have a sense, back to I don't know, of what this election is going to do or how it will shape the way I show up in the future. But I agree with you on a kind of immediate feelings level like what felt good in real-time is actually what also ended up feeling pretty good on election day. I struggle to put a lot of credence in like sometimes oh feeling good while I was doing this is something I should pay attention to. Because as we know a lot of important things don't always feel good in real-time. And I don't mean that like I felt instantly rewarded and my work was done and it was just pleasant and easy. I mean like I felt like a growing investment in issues I care about and community leaders I want to put my faith in. It's hard to really sit here with a microphone in front of my face and tell you or anyone listening anything definitive frankly.

(12:20)

Aminatou: Yeah, I have no answers. Ah! What a like . . . this is nuts. It's so -- it's so wild. But you know what? Tomorrow's another day.

Ann: Tomorrow's another day. Maybe we will have something other than a common and shared uncertainty by next week. But yeah, I feel like I'm out of words for you for this week. [Laughter] Just I'm done. I am just like the shrug emoji, that's what I've got.

Aminatou: Well listen, do not despair. This week I spoke to Heather McGhee who was the president of the progressive think tank Demos. She is also an NBC news analyst and she has a book out in February called The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Heather is someone who really has her finger on the pulse about all of this stuff and talking to her earlier honestly really did lift my spirits because she gets it. She gets it, she gets it. And she also reminded me that even though no one is super excited or whatever it is really worth celebrating the times that we win, you know? Like Joe Biden is winning a larger share of the popular vote, the largest share of the popular vote that we've ever seen, and that's pretty amazing. That is pretty, pretty, pretty amazing. It's fingers crossed very possible that Ivanka's dad will never be spoken about on this podcast ever again and certainly will have a new job and that's also a really big deal. It's so funny, like we're winning and it still feels like a funeral, you know? [Laughs] I am trying to shake that feeling and I think that you can be hopeful and pragmatic and also not completely despondent, like all of those things are possible. So talking to Heather gave me a little of that back.

(14:24)

Ann: I'm excited to listen to this in part because a friend of mine just texted me today that there are new emojis, one of which is sort of like smile with teardrop, and I'm like yes that is sort of how I am feeling when I hear you describe that so I'm excited to listen.

Aminatou: Oh my gosh. Here's Heather.

[Interview Starts]

Aminatou: Hi Heather, thank you for coming to Call Your Girlfriend.

Heather: Oh it's so good to be with you.

Aminatou: So we are talking on Thursday morning. This episode will be out on Friday so, you know, who knows where we'll be at by Friday? Maybe Nevada will decide to . . .

Heather: President Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris, that's where we'll be by Friday.

Aminatou: Hah! How are you feeling this morning? Is that even an appropriate question to ask?

Heather: You know, it is. I am fine. I'm good. Basically for me the number one goal was stopping our country from completely self-destructing by giving Donald Trump four more years. And since about midnight on the day of the election I have been clear that that's going to happen. We've known, those of us who work in democracy and election administration as I have for a couple decades through my think tank that I used to run Demos, we knew that because of the way that basically the Democrats said stay safe, vote by mail, and Donald Trump said there's no pandemic, that on the night of the election it would be possible that Donald Trump would look like he's winning. He would try to sike the country out and then call fraud on counting the ballots thereafter. We've been talking about that for months.

(16:12)

And so on the night of the election when all that came to pass I went to bed pretty calm, I mean disappointed as hell that we weren't doing better down ballot but pretty certain that, you know, this was the most important job -- number one -- which was to stop Trump from destroying absolutely every vestige of institutional democracy that we have was going to be taken care of.

Aminatou: Ugh, I'm so glad to hear you say that we were prepared for this, right? That we knew that the count would take a long time. We understood that we had asked Democrats to vote by mail. But talking to a lot of my friends and even listening to the news there's just this lingering sense of disappointment and I wonder, you know, what do you really make of that?

Heather: I mean I am disappointed. I don't feel despair, frustration, shock, outrage, grief. And that's because I know how powerful the white story is and has been as an organizing principle in this country and that we have not seen a better storyteller of the white story, a better marketer of the white story in modern history than Donald Trump. That same white story which is a zero-sum story that says there's a hierarchy of racial groups in this country and that white people are at the top and they deserve to be and the encroachment of any others is an existential threat to their property, their peace and security, and most fundamentally their status. That is Donald Trump's story. That is Fox News' story. That's the dominant story in America. And so I'm not surprised, you know? I'm a black woman. I'm not surprised by what America is. I am also not surprised that it is black people that are saving America from itself in Milwaukee, in Detroit, possibly as of this morning in Atlanta, in Philadelphia. I'm not grieving, I'm not outraged, I'm not disappointed because I was never under any real illusions about the depth of the transformation that has to happen in white consciousness in order for this country to survive and thrive.

(18:38)

Aminatou: Whew. I feel like this is a free therapy session for me because I obviously know all of these things but I think that still seeing the raw number of oh, 60-plus million people believe this? Like I know that. I know that and it doesn't surprise me. But to actually see it quantified in a way that matters is still a gut punch.

Heather: Yeah. It's a gut punch and I think it's also because we have a somewhat simplistic narrative about racism which would allow us to then say from 68 million Trump voters we would say God, but 68 million Americans can't be racist. And that includes millions of Hispanic people and it includes hundreds of thousands of black people. It can't be racism. But part of that white story is one that excuses racial oppression, racial disparities, racial terror right? Which is what's going on with the police with black and indigenous and brown communities and what's going on with immigrants and refugees. It excuses it in the name of a more innocent objective right?

(19:55)

So a lot of people would say "I'm voting for Donald Trump because he made my 401(k) the best it's been in decades. That's not racist for me to want a bigger 401(k)." But of course it is, right? It is racist to accept racism, to accept and excuse a way be it violence, oppression, and terror that is being waged by those same people on people of color for your own financial benefit. That's in fact how we got slavery right? Let's be very clear right? Saying it's my economic interest and I'm okay with the racial cost is in fact how we got hundreds of years of slavery in this country from very good, decent white people who were perturbed by the idea but it didn't make them vote any differently.

Aminatou: It's interesting hearing you say that, you know, the structural issues that are really baked into how problematic the white story is. Even thinking about the electoral college, like maybe the original scam white people pulled on us when it comes to how we do elections, I'm just curious if you have any words of encouragement or wisdom for what we should be doing, like those of us who care about politics more than just every four years. What is being organized there to make sure that the system becomes fair and reflective of where we're at as a society?

Heather: Yeah. So I've written a book that's called The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. I spent 15 years working at a think tank and I was president of it for four and the think tank had the goal of advancing solutions to inequality in our democracy and our economy. It's called Demos. And I loved that work. I was a policy nerd. I was a policy advocate. I worked on legislation. I testified in congress. I helped move big pieces of reform. And ultimately I found that a few insights were compelling me to do my work differently.

(22:10)

One was that fundamentally the economic inequality that I was battling was determined by the amount of inequality that we have in our democracy. It's a minority ruled by whiter people than the majority and much, much, much wealthier people than the majority. And there was something fundamentally wrong with a white majority that continued to vote for a party that had rigged the rules to make our economy so unequal in ways that was costing them the security of their healthcare, their retirement, putting college out of each, making housing unaffordable, suppressing wages, busting the unions that had helped build the white middle class. What was going on?

And so I went on this journey across the country to find out what was happening and what I discovered was that ultimately racism as both baked into the structures of our society with things like the electoral college which was a compromise with slavery by the founders, the way that the framers left holes in the bedrock of representative democracy to leave room for slavery, and then you have in terms of why even with a fundamentally unrepresentative and sort of skewed system of representation we then also have a white majority that is in many ways increasingly signing kind of a suicide pact with a party that has become so right-wing, so detached from society when it comes to climate or when it comes to the medical science around the coronavirus, that it's really costing lives for them to hold onto the coherent white story that the conservative movement has been marketing to them.

(24:15)

At the same time to your question I also find in every one of those instances examples of places where people are coming together across lines of race and in so doing unlocking a solidarity dividend is what I ended up calling it and discovering it in all these different places where just as the divide and conquer is the greatest weapon against progress when people can come together across race and build power to shape their communities it's, you know, the sky is sort of the limit.

Aminatou: Can you talk a little more about that solidarity dividend?

Heather: Yeah, so many of our dysfunctions in American society come from racial divisions that when we can overcome them and create truly multiracial coalitions that is when you get the political power to transform. And so I am hopeful, sort of inveterately. I do believe that there is something about black politics that has hope as its connective tissue but I can't be here as the descendant of enslaved people. You know, I grew up with great grandparents on both sides of my family who were grandchildren of enslaved people and who lived to be past 100 and I know how far my family has come. I can't. I just think there's something about the black experience in America that is both so defined by struggle but also so defined by overcoming. It's not an accident that Barack Obama's slogan was hope and Jesse Jackson's was keep hope alive. You know, it's a really important part of what it takes to be a black person in America.

(26:10)

And so I'm a hopeful person and I do think that in some ways having this election be as close as it was allows the white Americans who have awakened to racism and to the atrocity and to its alluring lies, they're not going to go back to sleep now. Like this anxiety that you're talking about is the right feeling to have about living in a country that is still so invested in white American innocence and still so invested in the white story. You know, it's got to be faced if it's to be defeated.

Aminatou: Speaking of hope there were some really exciting gains at the local level. When you look at some of the outcomes of the election what are the brightest spots that you're seeing?

Heather: I think one of the stories that I tell in The Sum of Us is the story of the fight for 15 of people who are quite literally at the bottom of the status hierarchy in society, right? Burger flippers, fast food jobs. These are the jobs where there's one of the highest CEO-to-worker pay gaps, it's over a thousand to one Demos calculated, and they have been the driving force behind an audacious doubling of the minimum wage in city after city, in state after state. It happened again in Florida to 15 an hour and that has absolutely been driven by multiracial coalitions.

(27:45)

Same with Amendment 4 in Florida which was a 2018 victory but that -- and that was thwarted again by Republicans and that was the returning citizens, the idea that people who have felony convictions should be allowed to vote. That happened in 2018 and that was totally a multiracial coalition right? Actually the majority of people in Florida with felony convictions are white. Obviously it's disproportionately black because of the racist nature of mass incarceration but that got over the finish line and it did help improve the electorate in Florida.

The white wing response to that which was to require that people who are returning citizens pay off all fines and fees even if there was no central way to find out what those fines and fees were before they could vote is another dirty trick. But there were a few ballot initiatives like that where I think I have some hope. There are a lot of also really great new black leaders in Congress like Cori Bush, a Black Lives Matter activist from Ferguson, from the St Louis area, who is going to represent that district in Missouri. And one of my favorites closer to home, Jamaal Bowman who's a high school principal, an advocate for restorative justice, and just a fantastic human being is going to Congress.

So, you know, it's slow progress. I do think we need to cut off the spigot of the propaganda that is coming from the white. I mean I don't think that Fox News and Facebook and YouTube as they're currently configured are compatible with a multiracial democracy.

Aminatou: Yep.

(29:40)

Heather: I think the level of misinformation, both foreign and domestic that we have seen. The combination of the disinformation, the conspiracy theories, and the voter suppression I think shaved ten percent off of Biden and the Democrats' potential victory. I don't think that we can still take these ballot results on face value because of just how many forces there have been arrayed to try to distort and corrupt our democracy from the White House to halfway across the world. So I do think that we need to remember that even as Democrats kind of fight to maintain the legitimacy of the election in which the Democrat is ahead by millions of votes, it's also really important for us to not let the coordinated and multipronged attempt that has been successful with millions of people to suppress and to distort and to sow misinformation about the vote, we can't let that go. That needs to stay a part of the story.

Aminatou: Let's take a break. No matter what the outcome of this election is we really need to have a reckoning with how all of our systems are working or not working right? And misinformation is definitely at the top of the list but I think we've seen an erosion of pretty much every institution that we have that we think is a stopgap for a lot of the problems that we're experiencing. I'm just curious what's the status of the health of a lot of our public institutions but also what can individual voters be doing to make sure that we are holding the right people accountable?

(31:48)

Heather: I mean I think we just have to stay vigilant. I mean this has been a huge sort of turning up the volume on everyday Americans' civic participation right? Politics used to be something that folks didn't pay that much attention to and we've seen during the era of Trump being in the White House tens of millions of people become regular donors and activists and volunteers. That's got to stay. You know, we've got to keep doing it. We've got to keep registering voters, keep talking to voters. I really want to recommend a program that's being run by the National Grassroots Organization called People's Action which has had for the past couple of years a rural voters project which uses the tactic of what's known as deep canvasing. It sort of first came onto the scene by showing amazing results in terms of trans rights. Basically it involves deep, open-ended, long conversations with strangers. [Laughs] Which is, you know, actually also kind of fascinating. And it's something that, you know, requires a lot of listening. It requires empathy and bridge-building but can powerfully transform people on issues of other people's rights basically and creating empathetic bridges towards whatever group is being discriminated against.

This rural project from People's Action this year was really focused on immigration because that is where so much of the division and animosity is and so much of the power of Trump's narrative is. And actually George Goehl who runs People's Action has a podcast called To See Each Other which talks about the deep canvasing project. That's something that since the pandemic has been happening by phone, and I participated in a couple of the phone banks, and it's going to be ongoing.

(34:12)

We just need more relationship building with the Americans who currently have a profound and 24/7 relationship with a caustic, divisive, right-wing infrastructure. You know, it's just between good old fashioned grassroots organizing and community building and media neither of those two things -- progressive media and progressive organizing -- neither is at scale enough to truly, you know, do what we need to do to counteract the white story.

And I'm an analyst with NBC News and I go on MSNBC a few times a week. That's not the same thing as Fox in terms of selling a coherent ideological narrative. You know, MSNBC, most of the people who are on are quite opposed to Trump but that's not the same thing as making meaning of our society in a core way that is values-led. It's reactive, it's covering the news, it's covering Trump, it's about politics whereas Fox News is about culture, it's about identity, it's about a coherent story, and finding the pieces of news to fit into that story. That's why Fox changes minds and MSNBC doesn't. So we need more. We need more of that. We need to be in more people's lives who are currently being sort of saturated by a very destructive right-wing infrastructure.

(36:00)

Aminatou: I mean hearing you say that I'm both excited and daunted because it does, you know, obviously you are right about the scale but it also feels daunting because it just never ends. It never ends. It is a lot of work.

Heather: [Laughs] It won't end.

Aminatou: I know, it's never going to end. This is really betraying where I'm at mentally. I'm just like oh, this is endless sports now. This is how . . .

Heather: No, no.

Aminatou: Because, you know, they keep selling Joe Biden as the "You're going to have a boring president again." It's obviously a great -- like it's a great one-liner for Obama or whatever to say on the trail but the truth is the next four years are going to be a really hard slog, especially looking at how the Senate and the House are shaping up. We are going to keep having these conversations. And I think going back to what you were saying at scale to me the question is okay, who is not having the conversation that needs to have it? It always goes back to what is the story of whiteness, you know?

And so I hear from you some hopefulness that people who have been awoken in the last couple of years will keep at it and it's something that you don't look back on. But I think that when I really sit down to take in the magnitude of that it is very daunting because there are so many more people that have to be brought into the fold and frankly those people are mostly white and it is exhausting to keep having to have these conversations all of the time. But our survival depends on them.

(37:45)

Heather: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I also think that we have been having the conversation over the past four years in a way that's maximally exhausting which is . . .

Aminatou: Agreed.

Heather: Right? You know, when I talk about that deep canvasing where you're actually listening, you're connecting with another human being, and you experience more than half the time some shift and some moment of connection that is way different than angry tweeting at somebody or having a Facebook comment threat debate. Or just sort of, you know, doing neither which most people actually don't even do that right? It's not like you're actually fighting with someone; you're just sort of absorbing the anger and cross-talk in social media or just reacting to like a flood of bad news and outrage. It's very different to connect on a human level with someone.

Now I also think that this ultimately is white people's work so, you know, this is we are two black women talking about this and the exhaustion of it. I think there's a role for black people and people of color to play obviously because it's racial justice work but ultimately I wrote my book The Sum of Us so white people and people of color could have sort of a common narrative about our country's dysfunction and how we got here that foregrounds race but in a way that shows that racism as a divide-and-conquer tool of plutocrats basically is an enemy to us all and is one that we all have a stake in fighting. So we can kind of pass the baton a little bit to . . . [Laughs]

Aminatou: Make other people do work. [Laughs]

(39:45)

Heather: You know, to be like they're not just doing this for us right? Like out of some sense of charity or some sense of altruism or some feelings of guilt. That is not enough. That does not stick when confronted with a feeling of material or safety threat which is what the right wing is constantly saying that blackness is and that immigration is. And so we need there to be more of a sense of neutral interest in a society free of racism.

Aminatou: Ugh, I'm going to think about that. [Laughs] It's, yeah, the sigh is where I'm at every single day of this vote counting.

Heather: Listen, you can take a break. You can take a break. [Laughs] You know, I think it's really important. Part of my sense of peace that I'm having right now is because I put those goalposts pretty close right? I didn't say we had to go 100 yards and have a Democratic sweep across every state legislature and Congress and the Senate. I said we need to put Trump in our rear view mirror and get him out of the house that we built and pay for. And that is going to happen and my level of stress and anxiety and sort of 24/7 around the politics, you know, I deeply care about progressive policy change, about addressing inequality, about tackling this pandemic, about fixing our democracy and expanding the court. And of course racial justice and climate change. I really care about the policy outcomes but I also . . . and I'm generally speaking super ambitious about what I think our country can do if we have progressive governing power.  But I also really see this man as the threat that he is and it's like he has to be taken out and that is the most important thing. And so I don't want progressives to feel like they need to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory of having taken him out, so let's rejoice in that and not -- I have this tweet that a lot of people said was really helpful for them on the morning after the election. You know, I said "Democrats I need you to buck up about the presidential. If the way you're feeling right now would make your opposition happy then you need to fix your face and steel your spine." 

(42:40)

Because we can't just give into despair. We can't let Trump who's like a master psychological marketer, we can't let him get in our heads so much that we're sad about beating him. [Laughs] Just stop. It's really important for us to take this lap, you know?

Aminatou: Ugh, man, I can't tell you how many people sent me your tweet actually so it's making me laugh because I'm only now connecting the dots that the tweet was you. [Laughs] Yeah, you know, I hear you about all of this. It's so funny, it's like we're the only people that win and it still feels like a funeral almost. But I think that is also something to pay attention to not because I want to be a curmudgeon about it but I think that you can both be very happy that this threat is gone and also sober about what it means that you are up against. I just wonder if there is a progressive malaise because realizing that if within progressive circles we are also not reckoning with the story of whiteness and we are not reckoning with just all of the inequality that we're up against, how much harder it is to even have that battle and that conversation with the rest of the country.

(44:10)

Heather: Yeah. That's right. Yeah. [Laughs] You're not wrong.

Aminatou: I mean welcome to being a black woman in America, you know? You're just like great. You're like happy to be here but also this is . . . [Laughs] it's exhausting. It is truly exhausting.

Heather: That's right, it is, which is why I'm taking this podcast interview from bed.

Aminatou: I love that for you and as soon as we hang up I am going back to bed so I'm going to be thinking about you the rest of the day. We're working from bed today. [Laughs] Heather thank you so much, this was so -- it was so helpful for me and also thank you for all of the work that you do. It's exciting to do democracy with people who want to do democracy.

Heather: Yeah, well thank you for what you do and I love, love, love your book. Thank you for writing about female friendships. It's one of the most important aspects of my life.

[Interview Ends]

Ann: Ugh, let an expert take the wheel. [Laughs]

Aminatou: Always. Always, always, always. Ugh, Ann Friedman, it's nice to be in the trenches with you and to not know anything alongside you. [Laughs]

Ann: I mean what is friendship worth if not living in some uncertainty simultaneously right? There is something that softens the blow of the uncertainty realizing this is something that we are experiencing together.

Aminatou: We are really experiencing all of this together. [Laughs] That really blows my mind. What a nightmare. 2020, what a nightmare.

Ann: Ugh.

Aminatou: Can I leave you with a good Google rabbit hole for you today?

Ann: Yes please, please.

Aminatou: I feel like every four years I am reminded that Nebraska splits its electoral votes. I love it. I love it so much because you're like yes, we can still carry one here and that's exactly what happened this year. A single electoral vote for Joe Biden from the districts around Omaha, thank you Nebraska. But the lone blue dot is this man named Ernie Chambers who when I saw a picture of him on the Internet this week I was so fascinated by because he's this elderly African-American gentleman who loves a sweater, like love a short-sleeve sweater. I went down a rabbit hole of Ernie Chambers photos, like this man loves a short-sleeved sweatshirt and is truly a really, really, really great -- he served in the legislature from like 1971 to 2009 and then he's serving in the legislature again I think since 2013 maybe. But anyway when I was looking him up he is in this documentary called A Time For Burning that you might have already watched. If you haven't seen it I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend it. And if anything at all if you just want a boost of oxytocin for the day just look up Ernie in his sweatshirts filibustering the hell out of his legislature. I love people who love to make change where they're from so thank you Ernie Chambers and I just ordered a book to read about him called Free Radical: Earnest Chambers, Black Power, and the Politics of Race and I will be reading it this week. I'm very excited.

Ann: I could not be happier to have this rabbit hole. I have heard of Ernie Chambers but I obviously have not done a deep dive because I did not know about the short sleeved sweatshirts. I just did the quickest of Googles and he's giving me the perfect Democratic Santa vibes. I am ready for the seasonal shift. I'm ready for Ernie Chambers. Thanks.

(48:00)

Aminatou: Ann, a short-sleeved sweater. The fashion is always the way in for me so thank you. [Laughter]

Ann: It really is -- like what a good signature look. I really just respect that right off the bat, that you're like yeah, okay, I understand something about the traditional masculine uniform for politics and nope. Love it.

Aminatou: I know, a look, a look. A short-sleeved sweatshirt. I might even invest. Okay boo-boo, hang in there. Uh, maybe I will see you next week. [Laughs] 

Ann: I'll see you on the text thread but not on the Internet, let's be honest. [Laughs]

Aminatou: Oh my god, I love you very much.

Ann: I love you too.

Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our producer is Jordan Bailey and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.
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