Do Americans Hate “The System” or Trump?

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here. The Democrats won overwhelmingly in this week’s elections. What policy ideas and messages on the campaign trail got voters behind them? Which voters in particular? What role did activist groups and movements play? Elizabeth Wilkins, president and chief executive of Roosevelt Forward, and Hahrie Han, a political scientist at John Hopkins University, discussed these questions in the latest edition of Right Now. They both cast the results as voters rejecting the political system and the status quo more than embracing Democrats or repudiating Republican ideology. Wilkins says that Democrats in the states that the party controls should spend the next two years enacting policies that could be implemented by the next president. Han argues that liberals must create not only new policies but also new institutions where people connect with one another.