1 00:00:02,066 --> 00:00:04,600 I want to turn to a subject that doesn't give you particular hope at the moment, which is the 2 00:00:04,600 --> 00:00:09,300 immediate future of the Democratic Party. You've been very critical of the Democrats for veering 3 00:00:09,300 --> 00:00:14,300 into identity politics and away from the interest of the working class, of working people. 4 00:00:16,066 --> 00:00:20,066 Here's what you wrote recently in The Atlantic. The triumph of the 5 00:00:21,833 --> 00:00:24,666 Trump reaction, which is what you call this whole political moment we're in, 6 00:00:24,666 --> 00:00:28,933 the triumph of the Trump reaction should put an end to two progressive illusions 7 00:00:28,933 --> 00:00:33,900 that have considerably strengthened it. One is the notion that identity is political destiny. 8 00:00:33,900 --> 00:00:37,133 For a long time, the Democratic Party regarded demographic change in America, 9 00:00:37,133 --> 00:00:42,100 the coming minority majority, as a consoling promise during interim Republican victories. 10 00:00:44,166 --> 00:00:47,700 As the country turned less white, it would inevitably turn more blue. Not true. And, 11 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:54,533 by the way, you mentioned a second illusion about majoritarianism, which you say by this theory, 12 00:00:56,633 --> 00:00:59,066 the Democratic Party is kept out of power by a white Republican minority that thwarts the 13 00:00:59,066 --> 00:01:02,466 popular will through voter suppression, gerrymandering, judicial legislating, 14 00:01:02,466 --> 00:01:05,333 filibuster, the composition of the Senate and Electoral College. 15 00:01:05,333 --> 00:01:09,500 By this thinking, the ultimate obstacle to the American promise is the Constitution 16 00:01:09,500 --> 00:01:12,333 itself. That doesn't sound like a winning cause, particularly. 17 00:01:12,333 --> 00:01:16,633 GEORGE PACKER: Especially now that we're hearing about some Republican legislators 18 00:01:16,633 --> 00:01:21,400 who want a second constitutional convention and who are pushing for 19 00:01:21,400 --> 00:01:25,400 it because they want to turn the Constitution into Project 2025. 20 00:01:25,400 --> 00:01:30,400 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, why did Kamala Harris lose in the framework of what you're writing here? 21 00:01:31,933 --> 00:01:33,500 GEORGE PACKER: There are other things outside the framework, 22 00:01:33,500 --> 00:01:37,133 I think, that had a lot to do with it, inflation, the border, 23 00:01:37,133 --> 00:01:42,133 Joe Biden waiting far too long to do what he should have done all along, and then Kamala 24 00:01:44,500 --> 00:01:47,400 Harris being installed by party elites instead of nominated by a democratic process, so all of that. 25 00:01:49,833 --> 00:01:54,300 But I think the larger problem is the Democratic Party has become the party of the establishment, 26 00:01:56,633 --> 00:01:59,466 of the status quo, of the institutions, which is not the worst thing to be. They need defending, 27 00:02:01,633 --> 00:02:05,433 but they also need reforming. And not along the lines that the party has been pursuing, 28 00:02:07,366 --> 00:02:11,100 which has been basically to believe that the most basic identity of a citizen is 29 00:02:14,400 --> 00:02:18,433 group identity based on race, gender, sexuality. 30 00:02:18,433 --> 00:02:22,900 And that is how the party's organized itself. It's how it's seen its constituents, how it's 31 00:02:22,900 --> 00:02:27,900 come to various positions on cultural issues. And I think in doing so, it has lost a large 32 00:02:30,066 --> 00:02:35,066 number of ordinary Americans who don't see themselves primarily in those terms, who 33 00:02:37,333 --> 00:02:40,433 are mostly working class, middle class, and who used to be the backbone of the Democratic Party. 34 00:02:42,700 --> 00:02:46,533 If you look at the party 50 years ago and today, it's almost done a reversal with the Republicans 35 00:02:48,666 --> 00:02:53,066 losing its working class base and inheriting college-educated professionals who used to be 36 00:02:55,200 --> 00:03:00,100 the Republican Party's base. And that, to some prognosticators, seemed like a good direction to 37 00:03:02,333 --> 00:03:05,900 go in and it has turned out not to because there are a lot of non-college educated Americans of all 38 00:03:07,966 --> 00:03:12,100 races and they are moving toward the Republican Party. And that is not a winning strategy. 39 00:03:14,400 --> 00:03:17,500 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Something that's really notable in the last round was that the elites, New York, 40 00:03:20,933 --> 00:03:25,933 Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, surprised to the point of being shocked that black people, 41 00:03:28,600 --> 00:03:33,600 black men in particular, Hispanic men in particular, would vote for somebody, 42 00:03:35,966 --> 00:03:39,100 Donald Trump, who has said outrageous, offensive, racist things about those groups. What are you 43 00:03:41,366 --> 00:03:45,866 taking from that? What are you taking from both that reality and also the surprise of the elites? 44 00:03:47,800 --> 00:03:49,966 GEORGE PACKER: Yes. Well, they shouldn't be that surprised because this has been 45 00:03:49,966 --> 00:03:54,266 a trend over the last few election cycles. So, you have to pretty much wipe your mind 46 00:03:56,500 --> 00:04:00,066 of the memory of those demographic numbers from the last couple of elections to think 47 00:04:02,033 --> 00:04:04,300 that this couldn't happen. It's been happening for a while. It really happened 48 00:04:04,300 --> 00:04:09,300 this year. Because if you look at, say, where I live, New York, the borough where Harris' 49 00:04:11,133 --> 00:04:15,866 numbers went up over Biden's in 2020 was Manhattan, the most white borough, 50 00:04:17,633 --> 00:04:21,866 the group over $100,000 income, so in other words, well to do white people, 51 00:04:23,933 --> 00:04:27,666 whereas in Queens and the Bronx, where it's a nonwhite majority, Trump improved his numbers. 52 00:04:28,833 --> 00:04:30,000 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Asian also, by the way. 53 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:32,400 GEORGE PACKER: Asian, Hispanic, black. 54 00:04:32,400 --> 00:04:36,933 So, I was standing in a giant crowd outside Madison Square Garden right before the election, 55 00:04:39,133 --> 00:04:43,266 trying to get in to hear the final Trump, yes, the big New York rally where all kinds of crazy 56 00:04:45,333 --> 00:04:48,600 things were being said. I couldn't get in. There were too many people. But I had a maybe 57 00:04:48,600 --> 00:04:53,100 more interesting experience was I standing in a group of three guys who were Trinidadian 58 00:04:53,100 --> 00:04:58,100 immigrants who lived in Flatbush, which is a very black and Latino part of Brooklyn, 59 00:04:59,566 --> 00:05:03,433 immigrant part of Brooklyn. They were wearing full MAGA regalia. 60 00:05:03,433 --> 00:05:08,433 And I said, why are you here? Why are you for him? The price of eggs, 61 00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:13,600 we're not respected around the world, and that stuff he says, we just don't listen to it. We 62 00:05:13,600 --> 00:05:18,233 don't take it that seriously. And, by the way, there are a lot of people like us in Flatbush. 63 00:05:18,233 --> 00:05:23,233 They just don't wear the MAGA hats, but they're there. They were right. And they have to be 64 00:05:25,633 --> 00:05:29,900 listened to and taken seriously and not told you have false consciousness, you're voting against 65 00:05:29,900 --> 00:05:34,700 your interests, all the things that Democrats have said about people like that. How about 66 00:05:34,700 --> 00:05:39,066 hearing what they say and then thinking, how can we appeal to them without betraying our values? 67 00:05:39,066 --> 00:05:40,600 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Do you think the Democrats 68 00:05:40,600 --> 00:05:44,800 are going to reform in order to beat the next Republican? 69 00:05:45,666 --> 00:05:47,033 GEORGE PACKER: I don't think so. 70 00:05:47,033 --> 00:05:49,200 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Why? 71 00:05:49,200 --> 00:05:52,033 GEORGE PACKER: I think it'll take longer than that, because, first of all, I don't see the 72 00:05:53,933 --> 00:05:57,533 immediate aftermath of the election moving in that direction. I don't see a kind of 73 00:06:00,566 --> 00:06:05,533 party-wide sense we have to do something different, which is what happened after '88, 74 00:06:07,833 --> 00:06:11,033 when, for the third straight time, a Republican wiped out a Democrat for president, and because 75 00:06:13,466 --> 00:06:18,466 these are entrenched ways of thinking and ways of organizing the party. And they can't be uprooted 76 00:06:20,566 --> 00:06:25,466 quickly. There are interest groups whose entire purpose, not just financial but idealistic, 77 00:06:28,900 --> 00:06:33,900 is to push the party in the direction that I think has cornered it in a way that makes 78 00:06:36,033 --> 00:06:39,733 it less and less popular with the broad American public. And they're not going to go away either. 79 00:06:41,433 --> 00:06:45,833 The donors, who are the financial backbone, may not feel the economic 80 00:06:47,933 --> 00:06:51,500 pressures that ordinary people do and may be more concerned with the cultural issues. So -- 81 00:06:51,500 --> 00:06:53,533 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: A million bucks buys a lot of eggs? 82 00:06:53,533 --> 00:06:54,733 GEORGE PACKER: Yes, it does. 83 00:06:54,733 --> 00:06:56,900 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's my slogan. 84 00:06:56,900 --> 00:07:01,400 GEORGE PACKER: I think that could be a good one for 2028, if anyone wants to grab it. 85 00:07:03,466 --> 00:07:05,866 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes. I'm going to do something terrible to you now. We have like about a minute 86 00:07:05,866 --> 00:07:10,433 and a half, but I want to ask you about America's role in the world. You're going to have, basically 87 00:07:12,866 --> 00:07:16,500 by the time I finished talking, a minute to answer whether the next Trump administration is going to 88 00:07:18,800 --> 00:07:21,700 bring an end to the 80-year period of the post-war liberal order that America has undertaken. 89 00:07:24,933 --> 00:07:29,933 Obviously, you have a lot of experience covering foreign policy and America's adventures and 90 00:07:32,200 --> 00:07:35,333 misadventures and attempts, idealistic attempts to remake the world. Give me a minute on how 91 00:07:37,933 --> 00:07:42,933 isolationist and how post-NATO, to put it in shorthand, we're going to see this administration. 92 00:07:45,033 --> 00:07:49,000 GEORGE PACKER: Well, like the drift toward of the working class for the Republican Party, 93 00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:54,000 this has also been going on for a while. If you look at how many wars have broken out, 94 00:07:56,233 --> 00:07:59,233 the Biden administration has pretty much been unable to work its will on in the last few years. 95 00:08:01,433 --> 00:08:05,666 It's clear that we are not the unipolar power that we were after the end of the Cold War, 96 00:08:07,533 --> 00:08:12,266 but we still stood for something. And that something actually was important. 97 00:08:12,266 --> 00:08:15,800 Of course, we violated it. Of course, we're hypocrites, like any great power, 98 00:08:15,800 --> 00:08:20,800 but we stood for a certain order, a certain set of values, a certain liberal view of the world. 99 00:08:23,500 --> 00:08:28,433 And I think that could collapse very quickly under Trump because he doesn't believe in it. In fact, 100 00:08:28,433 --> 00:08:33,433 he wants to destroy it and so do the people who he's putting into key positions. 101 00:08:35,700 --> 00:08:38,266 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, we'll have you back next year to see how that's going, but I'm really glad 102 00:08:38,266 --> 00:08:42,066 that you joined me tonight. Unfortunately, we do need to leave it there.