How The Democrats Lost the White House
How The Democrats Lost the White House
We welcome Sam Rosenthal, political director of Roots Action, to analyze their “Autopsy” report on why in 2024 the Democratic Party lost to the worst, most corrupt GOP in American history. Plus, Ralph answers some of your listener questions.
Sam Rosenthal is an organizer and researcher who serves as Political Director at RootsAction.
We’re talking about young voters, voters of color in major urban centers and college towns who looked at their choices last year (2024), looked at the candidates in the way the Democratic Party had conducted business and said, “I don’t really see anyone here who’s representing my best interests.” So it’s not that these folks necessarily went and voted for Donald Trump (although some did) or voted third party (although some did). But by and large, people just didn’t come out and vote. They were not inspired. They were not galvanized. And they didn’t see how it would benefit their material interests to come out and support the Democratic Party as they had in 2020. So that’s the ballgame, basically. It’s incredibly hard to come back from a nearly 7 million vote drop from Presidential cycle to Presidential cycle. And everything else that we point to in this report, I think, is a bit secondary to that top line.
Sam Rosenthal
One of the reasons we wanted to write this report is because we haven’t seen a similar type of reflection from the DNC, from anyone inside the Democratic Party apparatus. There’s reporting that there’s some kind of autopsy underway inside the DNC. But the subsequent reporting was that there was so much infighting about who’s looking bad, which sect of consultant-types looks bad in that report and which comes out on top that it became too rancorous. It’s not clear that they’re going to release that report. We think this is complete political malpractice. If you can’t have an assessment by the party of what went wrong, they are doomed to run a similar campaign in 2028.
Sam Rosenthal
Discussion about this episode
What is overlooked 100% of the time is that 90% of the media in the USA is controlled by 6 corporations. The Republicans have been de-funding public media and intimidating them to the degree they no longer provide an alternate perspective or factual information. In rural areas the situation is terrible with cable providers only having Fox News for their customers which explains the voting behavior of people living in these areas. The elites control the media every bit as much as those in Russia or China or other non-democratic countries.
not "elites", the Parasitic Predatory class, they are not elite, they are insanely greedy
People need to think for themselves. What a bunch of sheep!
Bruce, that takeover of the media happened under President Bill Clinton, not the Republicans. Look up the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Bruce: Also overlooked is that people seem to choose to listen to those bought and sold media over and over. I don't know why people are wedded to CNN etc. but they are. And you can't get them to listen to a more free medium. I don't know why but I've had no success with that.
Autopsy is RIGHT!! Democrats are STILL BRAIN DEAD!! ZOHRAN Mamdani is leading the way!! Millionaire Democrats (to include Warren & Doggett & Harris & Walz) HAVE HOPELESSLY FAILED POOR WORKERS!! It took a poor unknown, ZOHRAN MAMDANI!! To rekindle some spark among BRAIN DEAD & DO-NOTHING, SO-CALLED "Democrats" !!
The Democratic Leadership must be rendered vulnerable to being replaced entirely by ambitious, democratically minded, socialistically angled, group of humanity with eyes to see ears to hear and brain-hearted to manifest creative, practical answers to the needs of the greater citizenry - health, home, income, dignity, work, education, climate, and capable of decent, expert diplomacy for an emphasis on cooperation and collaboration as substitutes for war in a multinodal world.
We have never been given a breakdown of the 2024 vote count. Nor was it ever acknowledged publicly that dissenters were never given a hearing on taxpayer dollars being paid to fund the destruction of Palestine.
The vote “ uncommitted” or for a third party candidate in protest were never published and meant election result discussions that followed were hollow and meaningless.
Shirley Saffy
Ralph! they lost because blue is also the other cheek of the most corrupt uni-party in American history.
In your wildest dreams, when you were fighting the big corporations of the day, did you see these multinationals spreading into this cancerous monster controling every part of our lives?
I suspect he did - that's why he ran for Pres 4 times ...
To see Hilary Clinton still out there speaking up for Genocide and belittling young people who protest against such evil actions is indicative of how the Democrats have truly lost their way. She is repugnant and is certainly turning a wide range of voters away from participating in elects; as they recognize that it would be a better world and a more inclusive society if voices like Ms. Clinton’s would shut the hell up and just fade away.
We must figure out how to dump the current Democratic Leadership en masse. Totally unsurprising is their chicken hearted response to publicizing the evaluation of their dastardly handling of the (undemocratic) presidential race. Gutless. They cannot stand looking at their own shadow. Just like corporations have to be dragged into court for their malfeasance, the Democratic Leadership is incapable of courageous self-reflection on their own. They choose to remain blind to the truth of their own (gross) inadequacy as they choose to remain blind and dumb to the grave seriousness of the conditions of the greater citizenry. Blind and dumb because the redress of such conditions requires access to creative thought outside the systems that created such dire conditions. And the current Democratic Leadership - for all their fine education and political experience and greed - is wholly out-of-step incapable of accessing such thought realms. Their identities are stagnant.
Stagnant is the perfect word, like a pond with no nutrients to enrich its biodiversity, which has been taken over by scum. Anti-Trump is a weak platform to stand on, a gutless diversion away from substance. Sad.
The Democrats have been on the take since the early 70s. They will continue to push centrists policies and politicians. They will LOEE !
is this really Ralph Nader writing these replies (Ralph's Substack)
No. That is some other Ralph. The Ralph Nader Radio Hour is Ralph's Substack.
And Sending out unconditional love towards all captive to the Ralph Nader radio hour.
May God continue to fill your lungs with air.
Isn't it an illusion to harbor a notion that the Democratic Party leadership is open to alternative points of view when their actions/support have been consistently rigidly
attached to "centrism"? At least since Reagan? Isn't that leadership a shared psychological or character type born, bred, nurtured at the managerial, Ivy League, corporatized, bankafied, collegial, upper-middle and upper socio-economic class nest? What wild impulse would oblige them to "break set"? Render them sensitive to, vulnerable to risking their comfort of status, money, power, connection not to suffer apoplexy at a vision of supporting a candidate like Mamdani or Bernie for President? Didn't they engineer the ditching of Hogg as Vice President for his audacity to promote primarying stale and or Repub-lite so called "Democrats" (think: Josh Gottheimer)? What I want to know is how can this crew (like Carville, Clintons, Obamas, Schumer etc) be sent out to pasture and replaced by fresh, creative, politically astute (think: Mamdani) younger, bright, ambitiously devoted to raising the poor, curbing corporate/Wall Street and War Industry power, instituting Medicare for All-job training-basic income for all and worthwhile necessarily ambitious climate change actions. Schumer and Jeffries types have got to be pushed out into privatized jobs because they are wholly insufficient to meet the political necessities of the moment.
Shucks, I suspect if offered enough $$$ they would leave, isn't that the D's MO? - or are they promised more if they stick around and do the Corp bidding awhile longer ..
I really understand your cynicism and ridicule - fully. And, share it. And, at the same time, I crave ideas that advance possibilities. Given what we know of the whole world picture and the USA's "state" in it, including too our planet Gaia's "state", I sense we have very little time - if any - to organize, envision, act in ways we've never done before to transform. what must be transformed. I refuse "give-up" and "passivity" because our world is so infinitely wondrous and life in all its forms so incredibly astonishing.
I agree - I haven't given up on we the people, only on the DP ...
See my post above ...
You should have Professor Richard Wolfe on your show. He's predicting the end of US domination and the failure of capitalism as we know it. In the not too distant future.
Where does Roots Action get its funding? Can’t be just from citizens because Rosenthal sounds pretty darn soft on creating real change FAST not in another 10 yrs.
When RN asks who would you say right shouldn’t run again. Just because AOC is said in mainstream media to be a possible
primary opponent to Schumer does Roots Action mention her, he doesn’t mention other MAJOR corporate democrats like Jefferies, Booker, Gillibrand and the up coming Gavin Newsom a total phony. TALK IS CHEAP, ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THEN WORDS and that’s what the above mentioned do.
No one has the guts to do the right thing once they are in government unless there are groundswells of public support and teams of dedicated public servants so they can act as a coalition. FDR was able to do a lot of good after an economic collapse with great pain. That would have to happen again for major positive political change to occur. Let's face it, most of us have been too comfortable for too long living in our bubbles of privilege. None of those who are ideologically righteous give up 50%-90% of their wealth to support the needy or to advance righteous causes. They give slivers of money to charity, maybe even the pharisaical and sanctimonious 10% and take all their tax deductions. We'll never have major and dramatic political or social change without large numbers making daily and sacrificial personal sacrifices with lots of pain.
Here's a good summary of the process :D
https://www.truthdig.com/cartoons/the-dnc-finding-your-perfect-match-video/
A fair number of Democrati voters went for Trump
I agree with Ralph here that Americans should bag the innerweb and become Luddites, and run or walk or bike back to Nature, but then Ralph is not about to do that himself, and he’d have to rely on newspapers and magazines to get his inspirational podcast interviews and exhortations and frustrations out to the public.
But Ralph like many Liberals over and over deploys the Democracy card and severely overestimates the democratic virtues of American voters. Most Americans have never been not up to it. Americans arent lovers of democracy. That is not a popular thing to say but is the Truth.
Dem groups on FB are actually BANNING conversations on Democratic Sociaism
Ralph keeps plugging away for Democracy, arguing indignantly that "democracy" is threated and defeated by the wealthy, and he is always calling for new parties to push back on the Duopoly, for Americans to rise up from their TVs and internet, but they wont do it. I think the preponderance of the evidence shows that most Americans want what they got. Americans dont want to become Luddites. And they dont want a Democracy [which in any event they think means just voting once every 4 years]. Most Americans dont want anything at all judging by the fact that most dont bother to vote. The rest vote for Duopoly authoritarian anti democratic representatives decade after decade.
Dominion voting machines--using Smartmatic software specifically designed to steal elections and fool audits--are the reasons the DEMs appeared to do so well in 2020. In fact, a former CIA agent exposed the scam recently on Lara Logan, starting with Barack Obama's surprising good results over Hillary Clinton, and Barack rewarded the scammers when president by removing sanctions from CUBA.
I am a PhD in Macroeconomics, and this guest is another in a long line of people claiming to be an expert because the company he works for has a website and some funding.
Charlie Kirk won the election for Donald Trump by getting young white males to vote Republican. It was not the economy or anything else. DEMs seemed to be run by bitter hags that are borderline incels (because no decent Christian man of European descent wants sex with women Democrats), and by angry minorities who want to know why minorities aren't in control of a democratic republic (the answer is majority rules in a democratic republic).
Lose
Thanks Ralph ‘Autopsy’ Fortunately or un the word autopsy always reminds me of the fiasco with the JFK autopsy. 36th President LBJ *Democrat
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/how-the-democrats-lost-the-white
