It's been a week since Election Day, and we're all still processing the results of what's just happening.
Donald Trump is headed back to the White House.
Tammy Baldwin is headed back to the Senate.
Significant changes are coming to the Wisconsin State Legislature.
And here to talk about all of this and more is Angela Lang, executive director of Black leaders organizing for communities and a regular contributor and an award-winning contributor to the recombobulation area.
Angela, welcome.
It's good to talk to you.
Thanks, Dan. Thanks for having me.
So lots to discuss as we look at the results from last week.
It's been a discombobulating week.
So we need to we need to recombobulate a little bit.
But as you're looking at the results, as you're processing everything, what's top of mind for you right now?
Oh, lots of fields.
I think the first thing that's top of mind is checking in on folks.
Honestly, there's a lot of folks that I'm worried about different communities, whether it's undocumented folks or trans folks.
Black folks feeling scared.
I think there's a lot of fear.
And that was what I did the first couple days.
I still have a list of folks to like check in on.
And I think the consensus is that people feel scared and people are exhausted too.
And I think something to note that someone else said another organizer on one of the many debriefs was after 2016, there was this real momentum of I need to do something.
And groups like Indivisible popped up women's March.
And that was immediate days and weeks afterwards, but this feels different.
It feels that folks are kind of moving a little inward, which I appreciate.
I think people need to take a second to pause and reflect and try to make sense out of, you know, the numbers and the data and the strategies and tactics moving forward and the policies.
And I think there'll be plenty of time for that.
But I think also it's important to process what we're all feeling too.
Yeah, I definitely am agreeing with you there.
It doesn't feel like the shock value of 2016.
And that just jolted so many people into I can't believe what just happened.
We need to organize.
We need to get out in the streets.
We need to protest.
We need to do all these things.
I think it feels like it's, you know, I don't want to say it's not surprising.
I think for a lot of people, the results are very surprising.
Right.
You know, I focused on Wisconsin as I have been over the last few months.
I was not that surprised.
I thought things were going in Harris's direction in the final stretch.
I thought some of the trends that we had seen across the state in the last several statewide elections
would continue to move in the direction that they had that really was not the case.
And we can get into that too.
But I think, you know, I, I, I was saying to people all throughout the campaign.
It was just like, look, Wisconsin elections are close.
Like four of the last six presidential elections in the state were decided by less than one percent.
Wisconsin was once again, the closest state in the nation this year.
And so we're now adding to that statistic.
Five of the last seven presidential elections decided by less than one percent margin.
The other two being the ones with Barack Obama on the ballot with Barack Obama not on the ballot.
It's going to be a close election.
You know, I guess I'm a little surprised that Wisconsin voted to the left of Michigan and Pennsylvania, which hasn't happened since 1988.
You know, as I wrote in my piece on the takeaways from the election, Wisconsin nearly defied the red wave.
Yeah.
That that happened across the country.
It was the closest of the seven swing states.
But, you know, a respectable, resilient, you know, loss is still a loss.
And so I think, like you said, I think it is, you know, checking in on people.
It is seeing how people are doing and processing this.
And I think the recognition that we've all got a lot of work to do.
I think those must, you know, folks like yourself in the organizing, you know, world, people like me and the media.
I think we all realized that we've got a lot of work to do.
And then I think in 2016, it was such a surprise to so many people.
And I think some people maybe, you know, disregarded it as to a fluke that had to do with like the Komi letter or whatever was happening in the final stretch of Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The emails, the not visiting Wisconsin, all of these different things that people have talked about endlessly for the past eight years.
I think, you know, with this one, it was just like, yeah, the seven states are close.
I think they're going to tip towards Harris.
We don't really know.
They all moved in the same direction towards Trump.
And here we are.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I take a little comfort in knowing that one, we aren't the anomaly in the way that like other swing states all went red as well too.
But we are the anomaly and the fact that we were the closest.
And I think that's something to be proud of.
As Milwaukeeans, right, like we're always going to wrap Milwaukee.
We're always going to be proud of the work that is done.
And I think, I think the numbers kind of show the true testament to organizing to, you know, the fact that everyone I think has a role to play, whether you're in the media,
like yoga instructor, my therapist, organizing, everyone kind of has a role to play.
And I think folks are really thinking about how they continue to show up, understanding the numbers in Wisconsin.
I think a big takeaway for me is that there's just a lot of opportunity to try and connect and to really, really listen to folks.
You know, we're, we're the state that, you know, went for Trump, but also reelected Tammy Baldwin, which is on brand for Wisconsin.
Yeah, just like Wisconsin, it kind of makes sense.
It's like two years ago when Ron Johnson was reelected and Tony Evers was reelected, you know, it's, this is the state we're in, you know, this is Wisconsin.
And I, I even broke down really at the decimal point level of this Tammy Baldwin won by 0.86% margin and Donald Trump won by a 0.86% margin.
That's, that's just the most Wisconsin results we could possibly produce, right?
Yeah, it's, it's funny because I think if folks aren't in Wisconsin, the people are like that strange.
And it's like, yeah, it is, but it's something that I think we've all kind of just accepted. And I think talks about how truly purple of a state we actually are.
And that like no assumptions can be made of one person shows up one way, doesn't mean they're showing up that way down the whole ballot.
And again, I really, I'm really trying to focus in the fact that I think there's real opportunities to bring folks in that want to be brought in.
And I say that, um, understanding that there's a lot of pain and hurt feelings and whatnot, but they're going to be some folks all across across communities, um, in rural communities and various, um, just other groups of folks that are going to, I think, very quickly realize and regret their vote, understanding that they didn't think some of the policies would impact them.
That the way they, they might, um, and I'm thinking about this and I, I say this in a way that I think it's.
I hope we all can get there at one point, but those folks that are going to be impacted, you know, I've seen some folks on social media, not on my personal friends, but just other folks that are like trans folks for Trump.
And I'm like, oh, oh, you're going to realize very, very quickly. Um, he was never for you and he probably doesn't care about you.
And what do we do with those folks that are going to be directly in harm's way that may have made a misguided analysis and how they showed up and, you know, when folks are harmed and we're trying to look out for people that keep folks safe that may even mean folks that see the light.
Later on, and I think those are the folks I'm talking about. We're not trying to, it's way the Nick Flintuses of the world to, you know, join us.
He's left the folks. No, yeah, no, we're not, we're not talking about him at all. Um, and I have a lot of choice words for that man these days.
Um, but I think there are going to be marginalized folks that will need to immunity and support and seeing folks say, nope, this is what you get. That's what you voted for. I think we really have to resist that urge.
And I say this as like needing a reminder for myself as someone that is also deeply hurt, but that's that that can be what we, what we do.
No, I totally agree with that. You can't blame voters for making a decision. I think you know, it's, it's, that's.
I always like to, and this goes with policy too. You want to criticize what's happening upstream instead of the downstream necessarily downstream effects of that.
And so if you're, you know, people might, voters are complicated. People are complicated. They're going to make their decision based based on a whole host of different issues.
Um, but I guess to it's, it's, it's on the Democratic party in a lot of ways to, to make the case to, to build the campaign to connect with voters.
And you know, like we said, it's close. We're all the caveats apply here. Very close election. You know, Harris, one more votes in Wisconsin in 2024.
Then Joe Biden did in 2020, but Donald Trump one more. And at the end of the day, the Democratic party did not connect with enough voters to get them over the top in this election.
I have some thoughts on this, but I'm wondering what you are thinking right now about what the Democratic party could have done differently in this campaign.
Yeah. Um, one is, I think, and I've said this for a year plus now is, you know, education. I, I've raised the alarms very early on when Biden was still in that there was a messaging gap.
You know, people are kind of like, well, don't you know what the Biden Harris administration has done?
No, like people aren't following it that closely. And until there were signs, um, by construction locally in Milwaukee, you didn't know that that was a product of, you know, the infrastructure bill and, you know, our dollars are our dollars and all of that.
So I think one, I think it was hard to connect some of the policy with like how people were experiencing and feeling policy. It's like, oh yeah, we passed this.
And unless it was immediate money into your pocket, people may not feel the effect of that for several years. So it's not enough to just say I did the thing when people aren't feeling the impact of the thing.
Uh, so I think that's one, um, I don't know if this is a democratic party situation or what, but I think there needs to be a whole campaign around missing disinformation, um, and what is true.
The propaganda machine, it was going crazy. And the fact that people think that Trump is the anti-war candidate is wild to me and goes to show how this man catches get up on stage and say I'm going to end the wars.
And people are like, yeah, that sounds great. Um, because they weren't met with anything else. No one was like fact check the fact checking even in the debates was getting difficult.
Um, so how is there, you know, an angle of a campaign where you're not only talking about what you're going to do, but then also like intentionally debunking things.
Um, and I don't think I saw a lot of that on the campaign.
Traditionally, you don't see a lot of that on campaigns either. People are focused on their own message. You don't want to amplify.
But I think it's important, um, you know, at one point, you don't want to amplify a harmful narrative and give it more legs.
But you also can't let it go unchecked either. And I don't know where that balance is.
Um, and then the last thing I'll say is, uh, working class folks, you know, Bernie Sanders had some, some choice words about connecting or the lack of connecting with working class folks and rural folks.
And, you know, I saw this joke on TikTok, because it's my comfy place these days, where somebody was like, you know, how terrible a message do you have to run where your candidate, you know,
everybody should know that she was for healthcare and, you know, basic rights and basic decency and raising them in one wage and pro union.
And somehow that candidate still didn't win and lost to a business man, quote unquote, who keeps going into, you know, bankruptcy.
So it's, it's just, it's interesting that that message that I think we all took for granted and just, I think there was some assumptions made that Democrats are the party for the working class, but for whatever reason that did not actually comfort people.
Um, and I think there needs to be like a real understanding of honestly, and a lot of organizers have been saying that's how do we build a true multi racial working class movement that people can feel that they connect with candidates and that their issues are also being reflected in the campaign messaging.
Yeah, I saw my friend John Johnson from Arcade University make this point was talking about how the people who voted for Democrats in this election, where the, you know, as far as income levels, it's the people on the poorest end of the spectrum and the wealthiest voters voted majority or Democrats. And I think that's a really difficult coalition to keep together in this day and age. And I think it allows.
Trump and Republicans to drive that working class message, even if their policies don't necessarily reflect that we all live through four years of Trump being president and his policies were not that of the working class, you know, campaigned as this change agent populist, but then governed as your same old country club Republican that we see every single time.
But it's, it's, I think it goes back to your first point that you were making there was about it being a messaging problem about it being and I think the traditional media landscape is collapsing like the world of local news and independent newspapers and TV news and journalism and that kind of thing that is collapsing and we saw Trump go on every bro podcast and whatever that he could go to.
And Harris was being, I think, a little bit too cute about the decisions that they were making. Okay, we're going to do this interview here. We're going to do this podcast there. We're going to do we're going to have this carefully crafted sanitized yeah consultant to fight type of message.
And I think that as much as anything is is part of the problem with Democrats, they just want says poll test and sanitize and consultant speak every single message.
Yeah, I think it is, I think Democrats can and should and will win on policy, but I think the conversations that Democrats are having are failing. And I think the reason for that is because they are just way too careful about things.
They just have to just let people be people. They have to stop, you know, oh, we can't do this interview. We can't do that interview. Should we do this one on the view? Should we do this whatever? Like, I think Trump just won re-election by saying whatever was on his goddamn mind. Seriously.
Two hour speeches in rallies to the country. And I he was he's constantly lying. He's constantly spreading misinformation.
But I think people see him not as authentic because authentic would mean you're telling the truth about things. I think people see him as genuine.
In a way that he's coming from a certain place of what he believes. Those beliefs might be ridiculous and insane and untruthful, but he's coming from a genuine place. And I think that is what people dislike about the way Democrats present themselves, because it doesn't seem genuine.
Yeah, I think what's the most fascinating is you and I have had to watch quite a bit of, you know, speeches and debates and things that we probably would not have wanted to had we not have the jobs that we have.
We have a specific media special coverage of a Trump rally or something like that as an example. Yeah.
Yeah, you know, I definitely would have caught like Cliff notes later, like watched it for jokes a few days later.
But we've all kind of seen the campaign play out for what it is, right? And you try to just like zoom out and just look from a clear view and with no biases, a true neutral standpoint.
And it just it baffles me that this man was somehow seen as better.
Like I think we all have seen, you know, Harris being a skilled candidate, whether, you know, I think there could have been some strategic decisions and messaging and everything that you had just mentioned that were made.
But like her as a person overqualified came with plans came with receipts and then here's this guy that's like they're eating cats and dogs have concepts of plans.
And so it's like trying to reconcile all of that like I refuse to be gasoline that some people think that we watched the same campaign and that he is suddenly somehow the quote unquote better candidate.
Um, when it's like none of those never about plans, it was never about policies.
It was about something more and something bigger he was speaking to, which I think is, you know, the racism, the xenophobia, the homophobia, the misogyny, all of that.
And I do think I don't think this is everyone, but I think that there are some folks that were like, yeah, I like I think it's going to be better for the economy.
And it's like based off of what you're using that because you don't want to show your own misogyny showing and you don't want to vote for, you know, a black woman.
And there are people that were like, I don't think foreign leaders are going to respect her as a leader and I'm worried about foreign policy.
When have you ever cared about foreign policy ever before, right? Not saying people shouldn't, but it's just interesting.
Like they're a mental gymnastics. I think people had to try and do to justify that he was somehow the better candidate.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I think, you know, and I wrote about this too. I think at the end of the day, there were, there were people who hated Joe Biden more than they hated Donald Trump.
I don't think there's a lot of people who didn't like either candidate, but I think saw it seeing, you know, the last four, they're like the Marquette poll showed that Joe Biden had a lower approval rating.
Then Donald Trump did.
Yeah.
So I wonder if the election was lost on the debate stage when Joe Biden had that disastrous debate or when he decided to run for re-election in the first place.
I mean, when he talked about during his 2020 campaign about being a bridge to the next generation, he didn't come up right out and say that he was going to be a one-term candidate.
But it was certainly implied.
It was heavily implied, yeah.
And I think his decision, you know, they did better that the Democrats overall did better than expected in the midterms.
And I think maybe that emboldened them to say, hey, we're going to run Biden again.
He ran, you know, the Democrats did well in the midterms.
We didn't have the backlash tea party election like Obama did.
You know, we're in a more stable situation.
Let's continue riding with Biden and bring him back for another one.
So I think, but voters were speaking and voters were saying that he wasn't the guy.
And you wrote about this for the piece that you won that Milwaukee Press Club Award for.
Many people had soured on Biden.
I just don't know if there was, you know, if there was, you know, there's always the questions like if there was an open primary, if he would have done earlier, if the campaign was longer than 107 days.
Yeah.
Like, I think so much of this goes back to Biden.
What do you think?
There are two questions that keep coming up that I keep having to like stuff back down because it's like, we'll never know.
But one is what would it look like if Biden stepped aside a lot sooner.
And she had more than 100 days to actually campaign with some of the issues that we're talking about have been fixed with just longer, you know, runway time.
And two, a question I don't think anyone should really be asking, but it keeps creeping up is what would the election have looked like have Biden stayed in and he didn't drop out if he was the nominee.
Oh, they would, I mean, Trump could have gotten 400 electoral votes.
I've seen some of those maps.
I think I think he would have won that kind of like next ring of, you know, Democrat swing states like, you know, yeah.
I think Minnesota, New Hampshire, Virginia, New Mexico.
Like, I think Trump could have won all of those.
And so like, I'm just thinking about the time that I spent at the RNC.
And like, that was, you know, kind of in the immediate wake of the debate, Biden was still a candidate.
They didn't made the switch yet.
And every Republican there was just spiking the football and saying, it was just like, yeah, we won.
I'm just thinking back to that week that I spent there.
And they were acting like a second Trump term was going to happen.
And I think maybe maybe at the end of the day, there was just no coming back from that debate stage.
And maybe it was cooked the minute the Joe Biden decided to run for reelection.
I mean, I, when you bring up the RNC, one question I really did want to ask you.
And I'm curious is, do you think the RNC being held in Milwaukee had any impacts?
I've thought about that.
I don't, I mean, maybe some impact is some of some of the ward level data that, again, our friend John Johnson looked at.
You know, downtown swung slightly towards Trump of, you know, of the Milwaukee wards that moved in the Republican direction.
Most of them were on the majority of Spanish outside, but there were a couple of places downtown that moved.
But I also wonder like that was a really underwhelming frustrating week for so many people.
Exactly.
And like, you know, I reported on this and we talked about it a lot during the week.
And, you know, there were people that were super frustrated by the RNC who were in Milwaukee.
So, so I don't, I don't know at the end of the, but again, I'll go back to it.
Just like, if the RNC was going to deliver for, for Trump for Republicans, wouldn't Wisconsin have ended up to the right of Michigan and Pennsylvania?
Right.
I don't know.
For a minute, because obviously I've been very outspoken about having the RNC in Milwaukee.
It wasn't necessarily for political reasons, like that was not hardly anything I thought of.
But I was curious to think of like, did it energize them so much, right?
It was also coming off the heels of the first assassination attempt.
Like what type of energy did that bring, even if those folks that maybe came in from across the country, came to Milwaukee, did that energize them when they went back home, just coming together after, you know, specifically that moment.
And did it energize anybody locally?
I think given a lot of your reporting and a lot of the analysis and the conversation of folks that we have had.
I don't think it really changed a lot of stuff locally, but, you know, just thinking of the timing of it, understanding that it was in Wisconsin.
I think part of that felt very agitational and quite frankly, probably kind of fun when you're being kind of the agitator.
And how did that kind of translate into momentum as folks went back home to the various states?
Yeah, I mean, there was there was a lot of people love Trump at the RNC like that that was the vibe there.
People were just like overjoyed about Trump as the candidate.
You know, they were just talking about him as this conquering hero after the after surviving the assassination attempt.
And it was just, you know, it just felt like they were preparing for a second Trump term.
And like, honestly, I going into the week that was kind of my approach to just covering it and listening.
And just like, okay, what do Republicans want to actually see in a second Trump term?
The results of that were pretty frightening. Talked about mass deportations.
Talked about, you know, a lot of really, you know, as much as they tried to run from Project 2025.
So much of those policies are just baked into any Republican agenda and was, you know, the Heritage Foundation had a full day of programming at the Milwaukee Symphony Center on Wisconsin Avenue as in the RNC grounds as part of that.
Yeah.
Funny how now that they're like, no, no, no, Project 2025. Yeah, that's ours.
It's been all this time distancing. And I'm like, I think that's also very frustrating, especially for marginalized folks.
It's like, that was one of the things that they said it was like, no, no, no, Project 2025.
That's just like a scare tactic from Democrats to try and get you to, you know, vote for them.
And it's like, he literally lied to you.
And it's like, now they're all dancing and basically gloating that they lied to you.
Like, he played you in real time. And it's just, it's frustrating.
I hope people see that and at some point come and see the light.
Yeah.
I want to talk about two issues that Republicans ran really hard on throughout the campaign.
And that I think Democrats are going to be tempted to change course on or something because of these results.
And I want your thoughts on them because I wrote a little bit about this in my piece.
Let's start with talking about immigration.
Republicans ran really hard on the border on immigration.
And my criticism that I wrote about was that I don't know what Democrats stand for on this issue anymore.
I really don't because, you know, after Trump, it was, you know, we're not going to have, you know, the family separation.
We're not going to have this. They reverse the many executive orders.
They kept a lot of Trump policies to the Biden administration did.
You know, there was the famous moment where Kamala Harris went to Central America and told people not to come.
And, you know, so many like centrist Democrats ran on, we're going to strengthen the border.
We're going to, you know, have, we're going to deal with the migrant crisis.
So at the end of the day, I just think instead of being Republican light on this issue, Democrats never actually put forth an alternative.
And I just don't know what they stand for on this issue.
And I think this was one of Obama's weakest issues when he was president.
I think it was one of Biden Harris administration's weakest issues over the past four years.
And it's not because it's, you know, and I think it's because they just, I just don't know what they stand for.
Yeah.
And I don't know what they should stand for.
Yeah. I mean, when you said two issues, I was like immigration.
It's got to be one because I think that was like a giant elephant in the room.
And it was interesting because every once in a while would come up on doors.
And I'm like, again, since when do, you know, folks on the north side of Milwaukee really care deeply about border issues, right?
Not saying that we shouldn't care, you know, on a, on a concept level.
And I like it as an empathizing with folks.
But like generally it, they were never issues that came up on doors.
And I think that Democrats have made a, I would say a hard pivot to the right, where it is no longer easy to kind of paint that difference.
And I'm not saying that people can't, you know, compromise and work together and things like that.
But what, like, it seems like they're kind of standing for the same things these days.
And it's, it's frustrating because I think there's real families impacted the very, very real loved ones that are impacted.
And I think it's specifically in terms of like immigration.
We're not having compassionate conversations about like real people, right?
People talking refer to immigrants as like numbers and quotas and not people with whole lives, futures and families calling humans illegal.
I mean, seriously, yeah.
And then I felt like for a while, like we as a society, we kind of retired that word, unless you lived on a particular corner of the internet.
And then like Trump brought it way back. And then now, you know, some obviously not civic media, but some members of the press feel comfortable saying it, because oh, I'm quoting, you know, Donald Trump.
And there isn't a certain level of compassion, I think.
And I think that's a lane that Democrats can step in if we're supposed to be the party of values and showing compassion for everyone and for our fellow neighbor.
I think that's a lane. And I'm not trying to say this is what the Democratic party should do. I'm far more left in the Democratic party.
So they don't want to hear what I got to say.
But I think the basic thing outside of policy is being able to speak to people's humanity and understand that these are real people at the border. And there's some that do.
There are some that have that compassion, but I don't think we see that on a national level of how we talk about immigration.
We kind of we kind of fall into the same type of trap with fear mongering a little bit too.
And I would say it's an issue similar.
Obviously they have a very different challenges, but I would say the same about crime and how Democrats talk about crime.
They get back into a corner and instead of, you know, taking what I would say the decent side of things.
They kind of like double down and then box themselves into a corner on kind of Republican light type of talking points.
And that doesn't that's not sustainable before a win. And it's also not how you bring people into a party that's supposed to be a big tent.
Right. And I think two Democrats policies this year has been like, hey, we tried to pass this tough border bill, but Trump stopped us.
That's the only thing we heard.
And that is a bad platform to because that puts you as a position of weakness and saying we tried to do something, but Trump wouldn't let us.
Like that's that's a horrible message too.
And I think they're just this has become a major issue for people.
And I think there are people who perhaps wrongly connect the border with the opiate crisis and connect the border with fentanyl.
And I and or connect it with, you know, saying, you know, we're spending money on the migrant crisis.
We're spending money to deal with this flux influx of immigration and not taking care of Americans.
I don't think the solution to be that should be to take care of no one and to kick, kick immigrants out of the country.
I think it should just be to better take care of everybody.
Yes.
But that's just it was not upheld in the policy platform.
I think there just needs to be overall a greater reckoning among Democrats.
Great.
Up on the issue of immigration.
Just figure you got to figure out what you actually stand for at the end of the year.
And it's okay to hit pause and say, hey, we're going to regroup.
We're recombobulate a little bit and actually have like new stances, right?
Like it's okay.
But as a party to say, you know, pause, we're going to listen to folks.
That message isn't working.
Actually, we realize this is our value.
And this is our new policy platform.
It could be hard, right?
Because people are going to be like your flip flopping or whatever.
I actually think it's very wise and very smart to have a party that's good.
Like, hey, we're going to revisit our platforms and understand the current context in which we all live.
Right. And then I think like famously, you know, after the 2012 election,
when Romney lost, there was that like autopsy report for a Republican saying, oh, we need to be, you know,
have a friendlier policy towards immigration towards the Hispanic community.
And the guy who ended up winning four years later was Donald Trump going.
Exactly.
Complete opposite of that direction.
So as much as Democrats might be tempted to take like these hardline border stances now,
might not be what people want in the long run.
So I think, yeah, a lot of recombobulation needed on that.
We are a little bit time limited now, but I did want to bring up the other issue I wanted to bring up.
Was that of transgender rights?
And that obviously was, I think the main message that Republicans were running on in the home stretch of this campaign,
particularly here in Wisconsin, from from Eric Houghney's campaign.
And as I wrote in my piece, I think we should I will again caution against adopting a more Republican messaging on the matter.
I think the expansion of LGBTQ rights is one of the biggest achievements in the expansion of freedom and liberty in this country in the 21st century.
And I think it would be a grave mistake to roll back on any of those rights to not stand with people in the LGBTQ community who are
being unfairly targeted for being just who they are.
And I think, you know, we've seen this a little bit from from Democrats taking these kind of squishy positions on, you know, youth sports or whatever the pick an issue might be.
But the comparison that I also made is that between the 2004 election and the 2024 election.
The two elections were Republican presidents were essentially reelected with a popular vote victory.
And in 2004, George W. Bush ran really hard against gay marriage.
But a decade later, it was broadly accepted and was the law of the land.
So again, I think Democrats are going to be tempted to take a position that's more in the shadow of Republican messaging.
And I think they need to resist that.
100%.
You know, I think if you either are a part of the LGBTQ community or no folks, people see how scary it is right now.
And Justin, I think the first 24 hours after the election, trans and LGBT suicide hotlines jumps in how many calls were being made.
I think that should tell Democrats all they need to know about how folks are feeling under a second Trump presidency.
I've seen videos of folks of trans folks that are in Florida that are trying to desperately get out because they don't feel safe.
And, you know, we would see these ridiculous ads from Eric Hoveby saying that like Tammy Baldwin, I think there might have been a Kamala Harris one too that they wanted to provide trans surgeries and jails and this and all of that.
And, you know, Senator Baldwin was in our office and someone was like, ask like, where is this coming from? She was like, it's just not true.
Like I support trans rights, but like, this is ridiculous. And in the way the ads are framed to to make trans folks out to be like the villains, they're all like dark and scary.
And it's like, it's, it's really, it's really unfortunate that people who have fought to live their full lives and be who they are authentically.
Are now have the threat of, you know, state, station type of violence against them because of how they are, which isn't is normal and should be accepting for anyone.
And I think Democrats, as you said, need to resist the urge of sacrificing values in order to win because you won't win if you do sacrifice those values.
You will be alienating people, whole groups of people that maybe felt safe.
And in this particular party will no longer feel safe if we discard them and abandon them the same way that the right does and the way that they try to vilify them.
So I think it's a word of caution. And I think Democrats would be in a very, very bad place. I think to double down and actually not protect the LGBT community, especially trans folks.
I people in the LGBTQ community are an essential part of the democratic, any democratic coalition going forward, full stop.
And yeah, again, I think they need to resist the urge to back a Republican position on this because they lost this year.
Lots to still recombobulate on with this election going forward, but always good to talk to you, Angela.
You too.
And, you know, take care of yourself in the days ahead.
And we'll keep talking on the other side.
Sounds good.
Thanks, Dan.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.