The Progress Report: Here and Now

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Zachary Karabell: What Could Go Right? I’m Zachary Karabell, the founder of The Progress Network, joined, as always, by my co host Emma Varvaloucas, the executive director of The Progress Network. All right, so we are recording this on Wednesday morning, November 6, Eastern Standard Time, and so that happened. Yes, indeed. We are on.

The day after an election that, if its ultimate outcome, i. e. Donald Trump winning another term as president, is not deeply surprising given where the polls were, the scope of that particular victory is surprising, I think, to most people, Republicans and Democrats and pollsters. The polls were not dramatically, dramatically off, probably about 2 percent here and there.

But, just enough to lead to a victory that was not even really that close, and I think the one thing that did indeed surprise most people is that, at least as of this recording, it looks like Donald Trump will win the popular vote, the first time a Republican has won the popular vote since 2004, when George W.

Bush beat John Kerry. Now, it is fair to say And I think demographically accurate to say that most of you listening to this particular podcast, even though we do not take strong political positions, and in fact one of our key goals with these podcasts is to draw attention to all the things going on in the world that are not the things going on in the world that we pay all the attention to, i.

1. politics and climate change. We do pay attention to those things, we just attempt to do so from a somewhat more constructive perspective about what the future may hold and what the present augurs. And it is probably fair to say that most of those listening to this podcast, including probably Emma and myself, do not line up on the Donald Trump side of the equation.

It is also fair to say that a considerable portion of the United States does. Now, I think there is a real danger of a 2016 2017 redux, and one of the real challenges of the way the Democrats ran their campaign And, in fact, dealt with some of the past few years was to relentlessly focus on all of the many and manifest failings of Donald Trump as a person, and in a way that should have been obvious as far back as 2016, but seems not to have been obvious, the more the focus became what an awful human being many people feel Donald Trump is, the more the more his electoral fortunes rose and not fell.

And this, I think, has to do with something that many of us on one side of the particular aisle need to look at, which is the focus on character by a set of people just doesn’t work electorally. Many people clearly voted for Donald Trump in spite of and not because of who he is. And many people did so because they either disliked the alternatives more or they had particular things in mind that are not either venal or racist or misogynistic or any of the above, but are simply about the day to day humdrum realities of, am I secure enough financially and have the past few years led to that?

Am I secure enough in my daily life? And whether or not we find many of those fears dismissible or statistically off, they are real and they spoke to a large percentage of the United States and they speak to some percentage of the world. And I suppose my hope for the next X years is that we find a way to move away from the constant outrage machine which will find plenty of fuel in the coming months and coming years.

And pay attention to essentially what is happening in reality and not how it is being said and how it is being construed. There will be plenty of things to object to that are going to be done, I imagine, from tariffs to harsh immigration reform and enforcement of laws that we can object to as actions.

But this outrage machine that keys off of every word and every phrase and every way of describing reality that we do not like is its own self fulfilling doom loop that at least we are trying, and Emma is trying, and The Progress Network is trying, to offset. Because outrage, while it can be an effective fuel in limited moments, has a way of consuming itself and becoming its own form of combustible conflict leading to absolutely nothing but more outrage.

This is going to be a challenge over the next few years. And I would simply caution all of us to take a deep breath to recognize that fears of words becoming actions are just that. You know, until there is evidence of police control and enforcement of draconian actions contrary to any protections of the Constitution, we are not living in a fascist republic and we should stop thinking we are and warning that we might.

There are plenty of objectionable policies out there that are happening in a democracy democratically. We can simply deal with that reality as it comes, without warning that we’re about to become some version of Putin’s Russia, or Orban’s Hungary, or any number of other places that we probably don’t want to live in, and at the current moment in the United States, we don’t.

So, those are my ranty thoughts the day after the election. I don’t know where you come at this, Emma, both of this country and abroad simultaneously.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, I actually spent the morning thinking a lot about George W. Bush, which sounds like a very strange response on the face of it. But I was thinking about, you know, Dylan Matthews of Vox with his very famous contrarian take back in 2015 that George W.

deserved a lot more praise from liberals than he got. And his main argument for that was that, yes, George Bush, you know, steered us through the Iraq war. Like, yes, that was a disaster. Yes, there was a lot of really tragic fallout from that, but he also created something called the PEPFAR program, which was a government program for foreign aid to combat HIV and AIDS that research has said probably saved, you know, 1.

2 million lives. And I’ve just been sitting here with that this morning as I think about it. Second Trump term, of course, worried about all of the objectionable policies that you brought up, less worried that we’re going to end up in some kind of Dictatorship or authoritarian rule. Although I do think that Trump could cause major damage to some of our institutions.

Thinking about Department of Justice in particular. That being said, I think that a, a second Trump term is going to be a mixture of good, bad, and neutral. Just like the first one I’m, like I said before, hoping that the bad is limited, that the damage is limited. People are going to have to show up in the best way they can to make sure that that damage is limited to the best of our ability.

But it’s not going to be full, unmitigated negativity, which sounds like I, I don’t mean that as like a pro Trump take or, or like a, it’s all fine guys, calm down, just as a, okay, let’s wrap our brains around this using realistic, sober minded thinking so that we can show up in the places that we want to show up.

Zachary Karabell: Yeah. And people forget, you know, one of the, one of the rare bipartisan moments was criminal justice reform at the end of. the first two years of the Trump first term, which was a bipartisan bill, which led to a lot of meaningful changes in some of the more draconian, at least federal laws about imprisonment and minimum sentencing and, you know, drug possession laws, and That was partly funded by, ooh, the big bad Soros money, but it was also funded by, ooh, the big bad Coke money.

And, you know, the idea that there is no consensus about a series of things and that this is all just going to be years of chaos. Look, I do think we are going to be in for several years of a certain amount of chaos. I think Trump is probably a chaos machine and the attempt to smash the federal bureaucracy is going to create a huge amount of unrest.

And we’re just going to have to deal with that, but all I can say is there has been a degree of actual Trump derangement syndrome that has done nothing but strengthen Trump. And it doesn’t matter if it’s right, it doesn’t matter if he’s wrong, it doesn’t matter if he’s immoral, it doesn’t matter if his followers are all the nasty things.

that some people say they are, it matters pragmatically about what do you do in a democracy with huge amounts of difference. And also waking up to the fact, I mean, I was trying to say this in 2016, 2017, that the United States has never been this genteel place that we often pretend that it is. You know, we are just as messed up as many other countries.

We have a lot of unique strengths. Unlike a lot of other countries. And the pretense that everything has just been civil and engaged and people have reached across the aisle and said, you know, I may vehemently disagree with your views about X, Y, and Z, but let’s have a beer and talk. And we’re all Americans at the end of the day.

Like that has existed occasionally. But it’s a myth to think that that is the core reality of who we are, it’s part of the reality of who we are, it is definitely something we can strive for. But it is a myth to think that that is actually what has characterized American society, or does now. And this kind of shock that there’s gambling in Casablanca, that we can be ugly and petty and difficult and hysterical, You know, we need to grow up and recognize that we have our own set of unique problems, but we’re also not unique as a country in that way.

And Magellan’s gonna, you know, try to trumpet American greatness, and the left has tried to trumpet American singularity and all of it in its own way, or has tried to say if we’re not the best then we’re also the worst, we’re also by far not the worst. So, I guess this is not a conclusive statement other than to say that And you know this better than most, Emma, just from Buddhist practice, that the, the easy pathway of getting carried away with one’s fears before those fears are actually reality does not lead anywhere good.

Doesn’t lead anywhere good personally, it does not lead anywhere good collectively, it does not lead anywhere good politically. And We need to be really careful to distinguish between our fears about what might happen and focus instead on what is happening.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, I would agree with that. Also, the thought that just the United States is not the worst resonates.

I have friends texting me today, oh, are you rethinking your plans about coming back to the U. S. at some point next year? And I’m like, no. I mean, even with Trump in office Having lived in Greece, spending a lot of time in the Netherlands, it’s, it’s a very good medicine for your system to realize that even with all of the problems of the United States, it is a very good place to live by and large.

So I will say that, and I would also add to that of course there’s a very easy comeback to this, but we did have an election day that was smooth. We did not predict, we were careful not to predict that, right, in our, in our last progress report, but there were indications that that was going to be the case.

And the, kind of the biggest thing that happened were the bomb threats by, not Americans, but Russia. So.

Zachary Karabell: Right.

Emma Varvaloucas: I would also like to ask you though, what you think about, I agree with you, I think there’s four years of chaos ahead, in some ways I would like to pass, press the fast forward button on the, on the VCR, which is not a thing anymore.

But what do you think about this potentially being the beginning of the end of a Trump era?

Zachary Karabell: Right, I mean, unless some pretzel move, which I imagine somebody will try to take to claim that, you know, I mean, look, the amendment about two terms is very clear. It’s not two consecutive terms, it’s just two terms.

So there is no way within the framework of law that Trump can run again. There’s a lot of people within the Democratic Party who are simultaneously thankful for the, the victory and will, you know, go to Mar a Lago and do their obeisance and kiss the ring. But it is also true that Trump will very quickly be a lame duck.

Now whether or not he maintains this kind of sway on the party and is a kingmaker, you know, he’s 78, he’s obviously a hail 78, but who knows what that means over the next few years. And there’s a lot of people who are going to want to distinguish themselves and step out from underneath that shadow. You know, there are a lot of ambitious people who are going to support Trump as long as it is politically expedient and abandon him the minute it is.

When it’s not. So, you know, we’ll have to find out when that happens and how that happens. But I think the assumption of kind of a unitary Republican, yes, sir, when, sir, how high, sir, is that would be surprising. Particularly after, let’s say 2025.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, that is my hope. I, I’ve noticed a proclivity amongst the left that we’re already starting the like, yeah, it might be the end of Trump, but J.

1. Vance is even worse. And I would love to stem that knee jerk reaction because it’s exhausting. We really don’t know what’s gonna happen. And also look,

Zachary Karabell: You know, people need to realize as well that until proven otherwise, the powers of the federal government are not nearly as expansive as most people fear or most people desire, including obviously Trump.

You know, one thing that should have been apparent during the pandemic, and certainly was a surprise to me, was just how much power Trump had. Governors have in a domestic crisis and an emergency, right? I mean, the pandemic was as close to a domestic emergency as we have had. And even then, there was huge limits to what the federal government could do.

Sure, it could shut down airspace, it could, you know, ground all planes, it could close the borders. But in terms of actual enforcement of emergency health care laws, that fell largely to states and governors. And that should be an indication of, we actually in the United States do live in a republic, there’s huge amounts of state power.

And there’s huge variety amongst what states do, including in this election, by the way. I mean, you had Missouri, which had one of the most rigid abortion bans in the country by referendum, turning that back, even as it, you know, was an incredibly red state and Josh Hawley as senator won an easy re election.

You had Nebraska, which was a much more kind of convoluted set of dueling resolutions. It’s true that the 60 percent threshold, but it’s also true that. 57, 58 percent of the people did vote to increase the abortion limits. So you’re going to have this lattice of states by states, where some states are going to be very repressive, like Texas and some states that are very red are going to be much less repressive, like Missouri.

So, you know, even there, there’s a, there’s a state by state reality, and this relentless focus on, oh my God, what the president is going to do. It obscures that. It makes a good story. It’s much easier to cover one unitary issue in Washington, if you’re cable news or if you’re others, than it is to cover 50 state houses and all the varieties.

But frankly, most of what most of the left and or most of what Democrats are the center object to The Republican party, A lot of that is state by state issues. They’re not really dependent on who’s in the White House, and that’s also something we’re gonna have to continue to remember.

Emma Varvaloucas: Yeah, I think that’s very much so the case for another nightmare scenario for Democrats when Trump’s talk about talks about.

You know, deporting immigrants en masse, undocumented immigrants, illegal immigrants, whatever the correct term is there’s no infrastructure for that, half of the states would not comply even states that may be red, you know, they don’t have the ability to do so. There might not be the motivation across different cities.

I mean, it’s, it’s a whole, it’s just not the situation. It’s not a reality that Trump can kind of wave a magic wand and just kind of,

Zachary Karabell: right. I mean, it was hard when Obama did it and Obama, you know, those first two years of the Obama administration were the largest mass deportations in American history, which we’ve conveniently forgotten, you know, and you could say, well, Obama did that because he thought it was going to position him as, strong on immigration so they could do comprehensive immigration reform.

Fair enough. But, you know, if you’re that, if you’re the undocumented person getting deported, it matters very little to you whether it’s a Democrat administration or Republican. And we’ve all sort of conveniently allotted just how many people were deported in 2009 and 10. I mean, Obama was called the deporter in chief by a lot of people.

Emma Varvaloucas: No, this is the George W. Bush argument. Like there’s just always a mixture of good, bad and neutral with any administration. And you’re absolutely right that we’re going to have to keep a check on the freak out so we can focus on the things that we really want to push back against. So can we play as

Zachary Karabell: our, as our, as our ending music, we play a freak out.

You can do a rendition for us. Yeah, I’m gonna avoid that one. So as we depart for the day, remind us, Emma, about all the other things that are actually going on in the world that are not about who won the American election. Another thing that we’re gonna have to focus on relentlessly, which is, this is not the only story, and it should not be the only story.

And it’s going to take a lot of effort to not make it the only story.

Emma Varvaloucas: Not the only story, and certainly not the only country this year that has decided to oust incumbents. Right? That’s the other thing. I mean, we are definitely part of the trend in that front. But yes, lots of things happened on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday of this week that were not the American elections.

Things that are on our radar. Botswana had a stunning upset. Everybody thought that the ruling party that has been in power since they declared independence from the British was going to stay in power. Nope, not the case. They were ousted and the opposition party is now going to take control for the first time in the country’s history.

The Japanese on Tuesday, while the Americans were busy voting, they sent the world’s first wooden satellite into space. So of course, wood’s not going to, you’re not going to rot, it’s not going to be affected by oxygen or water, so it might actually prove to be a much more durable material than you would think about at first.

It’s also more environmentally friendly because when it burns up in the atmosphere, when it comes back, it leaves a lot less. Yeah. So that’s going to be interesting. They’re, they are actually positioning themselves to work with Elon Musk. This is in part of SpaceX mission. So there’s a lot of stuff going on this week.

And other than that, you know, in the vein of we don’t pay attention to pandemics unless they are about to screw us all. Rwanda is in control of their recent Marburg outbreak, which could have been really bad and is actually trending in a good direction. The fatality rate is much lower than they expected.

Things are under control and that’s something I think that people probably weren’t even aware of.

Zachary Karabell: There you go. All right. So we will try week by week. We’re going to take a break December and January, but we will try in general to focus on what is going right in a world where there’s a whole lot going wrong and we’re going to focus Turning down the outrage temperature dial, whatever, dialing back the outrage dial, focus on what do we do to make sure that the world is the world that we want to live in rather than the world that we fear we’re going to live in.

And there’s going to be a lot of fear and agitation amongst a set of the populace. And if Harris had won, there would have been a lot of fear and agitation amongst a set of the populace. And I think that too bears remembering. We live in a democracy that’s fractious.

We’re going to have to try to, yeah, take a deep breath and face our future with eyes wide open, and maybe even hearts wide open, and not assume that all of our fears are realities.