Politics Chat, November 3, 2026

[0:11] Welcome to Politics Chat, in which I try to answer your questions about modern politics. [0:28] Today is November 3rd. It is Election Day, 2026. And I promised you that I would not talk about [0:35] Election Day stuff today. And I lied to you because I'm going to talk to you about a few [0:40] things. And then I promise I will tell you some stories. I came this close to walking you through [0:46] baking when I was going to tell you the history of American flour, which is really interesting. [0:51] But I decided to go kayaking instead of cleaning the kitchen. So I'll do that some other time. [0:57] But and I don't regret it. Boy, it's lovely on the water. But I will tell you a story. And it's a [1:02] story with an ending that illuminates the present. So let's start with what's happening today. Once [1:11] again, elections are ongoing right now. And if you have dipped into the news today, you will see [1:18] just this endless slew of polls and numbers and turnout and you can compare this place to this [1:25] place and blah, blah, blah. Go for it if you're interested. I'm tired. I'm tired of all the numbers [1:31] and all the watching that we've been so careful about doing now for so long. So I really haven't [1:37] paid a huge amount of attention to the numbers. And the bottom line on all the polls is that [1:44] it looks as if the Democrats will take the House of Representatives. It is not clear what will [1:51] happen in the Senate. And that's all we got. So I just cut to the chase for you. You can watch it on [1:57] a minute by minute, second by second basis in some places. But right now, that's where we are. [2:02] And we won't be anywhere different until after the polls close and the votes are counted. And just [2:08] if you're interested in those numbers, it is worth knowing that people who follow who's turning out [2:14] for the polls have expected that there would be a bump in Republican voting today because the [2:20] Democrats have so dominated early voting. They are also seeing very large numbers of Hispanics and [2:28] young people turning out in the states where those voting blocks matter. Those are the two pieces I can [2:34] bring to you about the polls. I would say don't watch. But just like you, I sneak peeks too. [2:42] But there are things that we do know today that are important. So I want to start with the obvious, [2:49] and that's what hasn't happened. There has not yet, I'm recording this at six o'clock Eastern time, [2:55] been violence at the polls. The president has not called out the military as so many people were afraid [3:02] he was going to. There are watchers from the Department of Justice, and they appear to have [3:08] gotten into minor kerfuffles in one state, I don't remember what. And by kerfuffles, I mean they asked [3:17] questions they were not allowed to ask, or that's what has been alleged. But we are not seeing violence [3:23] at the polls. And that matters a lot. That matters, first of all, because it helps to restore the norms [3:29] of a democracy. But second of all, like I said to you all along, two things. One, always prepare for [3:36] the worst, but don't be afraid of it. Think of how much time some of you spent being afraid that [3:41] something terrible was going to happen. And the second piece of that is the reason, one of the [3:47] key reasons that there hasn't been violence at the polls is because of the overwhelming popular [3:52] pressure against that. And that, you know, recognize that what we're seeing today is the [3:58] American people taking their strength out for a spin. And that matters, that so far anyway, it has [4:05] been a violence-free election. We also know that the administration has lost repeatedly in its [4:13] attempts to try and steal this election. And that's going to matter. That's still being thought out on a [4:18] moment-by-moment basis. But you just got to give a shout out to people like Norm Eisen and Mark Elias, [4:25] who have been in the trenches fighting to protect democracy all along, and all the people who work [4:30] with them either directly or in similar projects. That really has mattered a lot as well. But then [4:37] there's some other really even bigger picture stuff that is there today for people who are looking. [4:43] And one of the things that just jumped out this morning was that Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, [4:52] came out this morning attacking Trump, saying Trump was gaslighting the American people about the cost [4:58] of gas prices. Now, why does that matter? I mean, most of you probably haven't thought about Ron DeSantis [5:02] for a while. Pretty clearly, he is intending to make a run for president. And pretty clearly, [5:09] he has made the calculation that the way to win the presidency is not to side with Trump. He's got [5:16] to criticize the president. And that, again, on the morning of an election, not the day after, [5:21] but the morning of an election, before those numbers are counted, says he's got a pretty good [5:26] sense of which direction this election is going to go and which direction the party is going to go. [5:31] And that's worth paying attention to. And I'm not, just so you know, I'm laying out the pieces here. [5:36] I'm not telling you how the game is going to be played. That 2020 election is a long way away. [5:42] I'm trying to look at what people like DeSantis are doing right now to take a look at what's [5:47] happening in the country right now. So again, don't sort of panic and go, oh my God, he's going to be [5:52] president. You know, who knows? I mean, he might show up in white boots again, and then his career [5:57] is over. That's a reference to what really did him in a recent election, showing up in sort of [6:03] little kid white boots, which actually is something that a lot of the fishermen around here wear. So [6:08] they're like, we don't see there's a problem here. But anyway, the other piece to watch with DeSantis [6:14] is the Republicans pretty much can't win the presidency in 2028 unless they carry Florida [6:20] and Texas. And having somebody on their ticket from Florida or, there you go. I said I was going to tell [6:28] you a story. I'm also going to try, and you like rabbit holes, and somebody asked for entomology [6:33] rabbit holes as well. The ticket, we call it the ticket. That's because the elections until 1890, [6:42] 1889, 1890, in the United States were the people you were voting for, which by the way, you never voted [6:51] for president, you voted for electors in those days, were printed by parties themselves, not by the [6:59] government, but by parties on color-coded pieces of heavy paper that were known as tickets. And in order [7:09] to vote, you got the ticket from your party, and you dropped that ticket, and they were pretty big, into [7:17] the voting booth, into the voting box. Not the booth. I'm sorry. It's a box. It's very public. [7:23] It's usually in a place like a saloon or something. It's a very public thing to do. And that meant two [7:29] things. One, it meant you couldn't split the ticket because you'd have to tear it in half, right? You [7:34] voted the entire slate. And it also meant that everybody knew how you voted. So you couldn't tell [7:42] your boss, for example, you were voting for the candidate he liked, and then vote for the candidate you [7:46] liked. It was a very public thing. And so when we, in 1890, the election of 1890, we get what's [7:54] called the Australian ballot or the secret ballot. And the system changes so that the government [8:01] actually prints up, the state government actually prints up the piece of paper, but it is no longer [8:09] color-coded, and it's got all the names on it. So that does a couple of things. It means that your vote [8:15] is secret. It means that you have to be able to read in order to vote. That's a really big deal. [8:21] It's one of the reasons they do it. And it means you can start to split the ticket. You can vote for [8:25] some Republicans and some Democrats or whatever. So anyway, that's why we call it the ticket. And [8:33] like I'm saying, there will need to be, or not need to be, but it will not hurt to have a Floridian [8:40] or a Texan on the Republican ticket in 2028. And that's, I'm sure, on DeSantis' mind. It's also on [8:50] Ted Cruz's mind. Ted Cruz obviously would like to be president, although what he mostly does right [8:55] now is podcast, to be honest. But that's going to be a little bit of a hard sell. He's very unpopular, [9:04] people just don't like Ted Cruz. So anyway, that's one thing to watch is that DeSantis has come out of [9:11] the box swinging. And he, even before the election, Andy is basically saying, I don't think MAGA is the [9:18] way to go here, to go forward. And the other piece you can see are the number of Republicans who are [9:26] giving anonymous statements to members of the press, blaming Trump for where they are. They clearly are [9:34] going to try and make him the scapegoat. And it's not a hard thing to do because he's really screwed [9:38] this whole thing up and trying to say, hey, we Republicans are okay. It was just Trump. Trump did [9:44] it all. It was all his fault. That's the people around him. And we're good guys. And that I suspect [9:52] you can watch them say going forward. But one of the things that is going to be important to focus [9:59] on and to keep pressure on going forward is that I don't think that's going to answer. The idea of [10:05] simply saying, well, okay, we'll stop the war in Iran and we'll get rid of the tariffs. And then [10:10] everybody's going to be happy and jolly like a fishy swimming in the water is, I think that ship [10:15] has sailed in that Americans, I think, recognize just how extraordinarily the system has been tilted [10:23] toward the very wealthy now for at least 40 years. And they want changes. They want regulations. They want [10:30] higher taxation on the wealthy. They want the government to be making it easier for people at the [10:39] bottom side or the lower side of the economy to have equal access to resources, to be able to work hard [10:46] and to rise to achieve the American dream, which hasn't happened, hasn't been possible now for a long [10:52] time and is less so than ever. And it's not clear to me that somebody like DeSantis or frankly, anybody [10:58] on the Republican side right now has an ideology that meets that moment. In the past, the people who [11:06] did meet that moment from the modern day Republican side were people like Dwight Eisenhower. And his [11:15] solution to the crises around him was very different than somebody like Ron DeSantis is going to come up [11:23] with. He quite deliberately put together meetings of scientists, academics, businessmen, labor, and so on [11:31] to create a stable country that looked quite a lot like what the Democrats were doing with the New Deal. [11:38] So I was actually, when I was kayaking, I was trying to think of like, if I were Ron DeSantis, [11:45] yeah, I always tell you to play the other side of the table. I do that too. What is my move going [11:50] forward? And I think in this atmosphere, simply saying, we'll try and bring down gas prices and [11:57] build more housing ain't going to cut it. I think we're going to, you know, I think the real push going [12:02] forward is going to be for regulation of business in all the many ways that they're really hurting most [12:09] Americans, getting money out of politics, and raising taxation on the very wealthy. And those are the [12:16] three tenets that the modern day Republican Party has taken the opposite side on. So I don't know how you [12:21] both pick up those older Republicans and chart a course forward that can bring along Magus. So anyway, I thought [12:30] that was interesting that he came out like that, and that so many people are trying to blame, already [12:37] trying to blame Trump. No matter, we don't know what's going to happen, but you, you know, you, they [12:41] want, they clearly want him gone. He is bonkers. If you, you don't have to, I've told you this before, [12:48] you don't actually have to listen to his speeches. You can watch them on one of the YouTube channels. [12:54] And then if you open up the box underneath it, you can click on transcript. You do have to leave the, [13:00] the video running for the transcript, not to freeze, but you can just silence it if you want to. And [13:07] then you can just read it. And he talks so slowly, it's really quick to read it. And, and then if you, [13:13] the transcripts do code to the actual speech. So you can, if you want to hear something like, [13:19] if it's not clear in the transcript, just click on it. And that's where the video starts. It's a really [13:23] efficient way to watch him. But what he said yesterday at the reflecting pool was, was just bonkers. [13:29] And today on the Fox news channel, he called in and he was so off the rails that the Fox news hosts [13:37] cut him off. So the, and at this point is a lame, truly a lame duck. He's, you know, he's talking [13:44] about how he wants to be, to run for a third term because he's convinced he'd win. That is not going [13:50] to happen. And there are many reasons it's not going to happen. But one of them is that the Republican [13:54] party does not want him hanging around their necks any longer. They've, they want him, they want him [14:01] gone. Um, the, I, the image of hanging around somebody's neck like that comes from, uh, the [14:11] rhyme of the ancient Mariner, uh, that old, uh, poem by Coleridge in which a sailor shoots an albatross, [14:19] which is, uh, an albatross is supposed to be a friend to sailors. It is a, a good luck omen in [14:27] part because albatrosses can sail so far over the water. And, uh, and so they, they accompany boat [14:33] ships and they're, you know, there's sort of a, a symbol of the land and, you know, being out there [14:39] in the water, kind of like a talisman, I guess. And this sailor shoots an albatross and the [14:45] boat promptly falls into the doldrums and they're stuck out without being able to move it, which is [14:52] rather like being stuck on a desert in the salt water. Um, that's where we get that line from the [14:57] poem, water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Anyway, in order to punish him for having [15:03] shot this albatross out of the sky, they hang the albatross around his neck. So that's where we get [15:10] the expression to have him hanging around your neck or to, you know, to be stuck with an albatross. [15:16] Um, that's from that, that really quite beautiful poem. Um, anyway, so, um, so they want him gone and [15:24] the, the next months are going to be lit as Trump and his allies recognize that they're in real trouble [15:35] because they are cornered. Uh, many of them are concerned about hearings. They're concerned about [15:42] potential legal repercussions for things they have done. And Trump of course is facing the reality [15:47] that nobody, nobody cares about him anymore. Nobody needs him for anything. And there are a lot of [15:53] indications that we are going to see him lashing out in the ways that a president can without the [15:59] support of Congress or without the help of Congress. And we'll take that on as it comes. So that is, uh, one of [16:06] the things that I'm watching today. And another one is the Democrats, of course, because I have argued [16:13] this again and again, and I'm not going to go there today because I promised you a story, but, um, [16:17] um, the Democrats are what happens in our society when one political party becomes beholden to a very [16:27] small group of very rich people and ceases to answer the needs of the majority of the American [16:33] people. And when that happens, the country turns, the country turns pretty suddenly and everybody else [16:39] who's left standing that did not join that group. So sort of looking at each other, like, um, what's [16:46] next. And what we are seeing is next is really interesting because the democratic candidates and [16:53] ones who are cooperating with the Democrats, even though they might not be using the name Democrat, [16:59] because it has been so tarred by the Fox news channel, for example, unfairly, I think, um, they are [17:07] looking at the country as it is, and they are indicating they feel an enormous sense of urgency [17:14] to fix things, not to fix everything all at once, but to jump in right now and do the things that they [17:21] can do to expand Medicare coverage, Medicaid coverage, for example, expand the subsidies under [17:28] the affordable care act marketplace, uh, uh, bring back the snap benefits that were cut under the one [17:34] big, beautiful bill act, which by the way, was timed primarily to go into effect after the midterm. [17:39] So things are going to start to get even worse a lot, you know, right after these midterms, [17:44] that was a very deliberate on the part of the Republicans when they passed that bill without [17:48] a democratic vote in July of 2025. So we're seeing these different ideas from, uh, Democrats and Democrat [17:58] aligned people on the ground. They're really answering to their states in a way that is [18:06] very reminiscent of the 1850s or the 1890s. What does Arkansas need? What does Iowa need? What does [18:15] New Hampshire need? And those are not always the same thing, uh, because this is a really big country [18:20] country and different states have different economies and they have different, different [18:24] demographics. And, uh, you know, that, that, that sort of, um, experimental ground of people coming [18:34] up with different ideas is a really interesting one because what they are, the common ground they are [18:42] finding is basically that they are looking to return sort of common sense to the government. And that, [18:50] that makes sense. If in fact, you know, the Republicans have been trying to stop everything [18:55] for 40 years, the Democrats are now in a position of saying, let's build something. But what we need [19:01] to build here is, is now so basic because Trump has destroyed so much. What does that look like? And [19:10] what's interesting about that is that in this moment, it gives us the potential to rebuild a government [19:19] that is better adjusted to the 21st century than the one that has now been destroyed. So a lot of [19:28] people are already asking me about who, uh, who's going to rise for president, who are we looking for [19:34] and all that. And once again, I'm going to say, you know, take a chill pill because what we are doing [19:41] in this period is telling our leaders what we want. We don't know who's going to come out of the box. I [19:48] promise you they're the, everybody who's got even a vague interest in running for president in 2028 [19:55] is going. And by the way, that's not like, that's not an easy thing to do. You got to line up, [20:00] um, you know, support, you got to decide about your family life. You got to, you know, there's, [20:04] there, it's not an easy thing to do, but anybody who wants to do it is going to make that very clear [20:11] within the next, um, two months, maybe three. And, and that's not to say there might not be somebody [20:17] else who rises later, um, out of the blue, kind of that's entirely possible as well. But those who [20:25] it's going to be is going to depend a lot on who we tell them we want. And that's going to depend on [20:33] what happens in this next Congress and, um, and, and what happens with Trump, you know, what, what he [20:40] does. So I'm, I am way less interested right now in 2028 than I am in the next year of what happens [20:49] in the Congress, because there's a lot of, you know, Trump or JD Vance are still going to be [20:55] presidents. So you're not going to see huge changes to society, but you very well might see [21:03] some reigning in of this Imperial presidency. And the reason for that is that same thing that [21:08] happened after Nixon in, when there was a, a big shift in the midterms of 1974 is that the Democrats, [21:16] of course, were desperate to reign in the president. That's where we get things like the War Powers Act. [21:20] Right. Um, uh, but also the Republicans were as well, because they were very worried that a Democrat [21:29] would get elected president and then do what Nixon had done. And they didn't want that either. [21:33] So there is, even if the Republicans in the White House don't want it, there is potential [21:39] to reign in the, the, the Imperial presidency, um, in this next, uh, iteration of the, of Congress. [21:47] And it's also likely that we will see the passage at least through a Democrat, a Democrat dominated [21:55] chamber. Now, again, that may not happen, but if it does of the sorts of, um, uh, bills that [22:04] I just mentioned that do things like extend SNAP benefits, the supplemental nutrition assistance [22:09] program and things like that. And again, if the Democrats control one or both chambers of Congress, [22:14] we will a hundred percent see hearings and we're going to learn a lot. And you can already see, uh, [22:20] the degree to which, uh, people who have cooperated, not always happily, but have cooperated with the [22:26] administration are turning on each other. Uh, it's showing up in the newspapers already. [22:30] Every time you read a story, especially an anonymous story, remember somebody had to tell [22:35] a reporter that story, not always, sometimes the reporters dig them out, but the ones that are human [22:41] sourced. That was somebody who was willing to chat. And that's never a good sign for an administration [22:47] like Trump's. It's really never a good sign for an administration at all because it suggests that [22:52] somebody has dirt they want to dump. But right now you're already seeing a lot of that stuff come out. [22:57] All right. So that is, I think all I can give you about this election. So those of you who were [23:03] tuning in, in the hopes that I would tell you something profound, sorry, I don't have anything, [23:08] but those of you who just wanted a distraction, I actually have a distraction for you. And it's, [23:13] it's an interesting one because it's actually very tied to where I think the country is today. [23:20] And that's that, um, I want to talk to you about a novel that many of you have heard about, [23:27] but probably never have read. And that's uncle Tom's cabin. And I can already hear people like, [23:32] what, why is she talking about uncle Tom's cabin? I told you I was going to tell you a story. [23:36] And this is a story that actually applies to the present. And the reason for that is that I want you [23:43] to think a little bit about what the United States looked like in the 19, I'm sorry, the 1830s. [23:49] In the 1830s, you've got men, especially moving out to the frontier in the thirties and the, in the [23:56] forties and moving into the cities for opportunities that are in the cities. And what that does is it [24:02] leaves behind a number of women. And I'm talking primarily here about women in the north and in, [24:07] and white women in the north, especially in rural areas. And that does a number of things. [24:12] Again, get back to another word. This is when the word spinster comes to mean an unmarried woman. [24:20] Women who were in the home always spun in early, in the early Republic, colonial America and in the [24:26] early Republic, because there was just always so much spinning to do. So they had always spun. [24:32] But when the men start to leave, those women tend not to get married because there are fewer men around. [24:38] And so the term spinster, which was a woman who could spin becomes associated with women who don't [24:45] marry. That's a sign really of thinking about how the roles of women change in the 1830s and the 1840s. [24:53] One of the other things that women do though, is not only pick up the economic slack at home is with [24:58] this change in demographics. They start to go into the churches more. I mean, women have always [25:06] gone to church a lot, but they're in church and they are starting to worry about the way society [25:11] looks. They're starting to care about reform. They're starting to care about people having a good [25:17] relationship with God, which they always have done. But they're also worried about the direction that the [25:21] country is going. And this brings in Harriet Beecher Stowe. Harriet Beecher Stowe is from a family of [25:28] ministers. And I'm not going to tell you about the Beechers. That would be a lifetime event. Although [25:33] there was a book about the Beechers, about Henry Ward Beecher that won a Pulitzer within the last 20 [25:40] years or so. It's a great book. It's really a great book. I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole, [25:48] actually, if you're interested in that Beecher family. But Harriet Beecher Stowe was a writer and [25:57] had a bunch of little kids. And she sits down after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, [26:05] and she writes Uncle Tom's Cabin. Now, the Fugitive Slave Act is part of the Compromise of 1850. The [26:12] Compromise of 1850 is a whole bunch of laws that are not passed all at once, the way the Compromise of [26:18] 1820 was. Compromise of 1850 is about five different, maybe it's six different independent [26:24] laws that are passed together, and then people call them the Compromise of 1850. But one of those laws [26:30] was the Fugitive Slave Act. And the Fugitive Slave Act required Northerners to return fugitives, that is, [26:40] Black Americans who had escaped from enslavement in the South, to give them back and send them back into [26:48] slavery. And the way that usually worked was that there were people called slavers or slave traders [26:55] who would come into the North and say, that's Joe, and I'm going to take him and return him to [27:03] enslavement to the man who claims to own him. But the trick here is that Joe and Jane and any of the [27:11] formerly or not enslaved people who were in the South did not, under the Fugitive Slave Act, have [27:18] the right to testify on their own behalf. They couldn't do anything. And those people who turned [27:26] them in actually got a payment for doing so. And this idea that the North that loathed enslavement [27:36] for many reasons was going to be caught up in the system of human enslavement really infuriated a lot [27:43] of people in the North to the point, in fact, that this is where we start to see the word conservative [27:50] used in America because the Southern enslavers who really loved this law got so mad at the [27:59] the Northerners who said they wouldn't enforce it. They started to call them radicals because they [28:03] wouldn't follow that law and they called themselves conservatives. And that's one of the things Lincoln [28:09] flips on his head and he's like, Hey, wait, we're the conservatives. We care about the Declaration [28:15] of Independence. You're the radicals who are trying to create human enslavement across the country. [28:20] Anyway, she writes this book, Uncle Tom's Cabin and Uncle Tom's Cabin. I'm sure you've heard of it. [28:26] And you, some of you may have read it. It is available. It's two volumes. It is available online. [28:32] And many of you, I suspect after hearing me talk about it, are going to run out and start to read [28:36] it. And you're going to be horrified that I told you it was an exciting and important book, [28:40] but that's because you're reading it with 21st century sensibilities. Imagine again, 1853, [28:49] this thing shows up. And this book is earth shattering in a number of ways. The first of which [28:56] is that it is the first American novel, at least the first very prominent American novel that treats [29:03] black Americans as the centerpieces of a novel. And as you know, from your high school English classes, [29:08] in order to be the centerpiece, the central character of a novel, you, the characters have [29:14] to mature, they have to change. They're, they, they, they, if they're static, they're just sort of window [29:21] dressing. Right. And the centerpiece of this book, of course, is not surprisingly uncle Tom. [29:27] So that was itself a big deal. And by the way, I'm going to give you spoilers here. So if you [29:32] don't want to know how the book comes out, go away. Um, but then there is more to the book than that. [29:38] Uncle Tom is not only the center of the book. Uncle Tom is a Christ figure. Uncle Tom actually ends up [29:45] becoming a martyr and, uh, and is, is sacrificed because he is trying to protect, um, another [29:53] enslaved person. Uh, he's killed, uh, by the, the man who claims to own him because of the fact he's [30:00] protecting somebody else. And, um, and that idea that a black man could, could be compared to Christ [30:08] was, I mean, it just imagine right in the 1850s, but there's more than that. Um, the story in uncle [30:17] Tom's cabin is that there is a family in Kentucky and they fancy themselves as, um, uh, benevolent [30:26] enslavers and that they have this family and they have servants and so on, but they run into economic [30:33] trouble and to get out of it, the father of the group, the, the, the patriarch of the group decides [30:40] he has to sell to enslaved people. One is uncle Tom and the other one is a little boy that belongs to [30:47] is the, the child of this woman named Eliza. And the story is set up around these two sales and in [30:57] the one uncle Tom sacrifices himself and goes along with the sale. And the other one, Eliza refuses [31:06] to let her child be taken away from her. And she runs away and she crosses the Ohio river when it is [31:14] full of flows of ice. She actually runs across on the flows of ice carrying or not carrying her child. [31:20] I think he's beside her and his name is Henry and, um, and bloodhounds, um, in the play bloodhounds [31:26] follow her to try and keep her. And if you know, the, the movie, uh, all about Eve that has Betty [31:32] Davis in it, when Betty Davis is busy, like doing her Betty Davis thing. Um, uh, the, somebody says, [31:42] you know, she's sort of the sob story and someone goes, ah, we got everything here, but Eliza and the [31:46] bloodhounds. That's how popular that image remained all those years later. Right. When, you know, by the time [31:53] you got talky movies, they're still talking about Eliza and the bloodhounds. Anyway, the part of the [31:58] story is Eliza's trip north. The other part of the story is uncle Tom's trip south. And I'm not going to [32:09] go into all the pieces of that because you could actually really study that book for a long time. [32:13] It's very important. For example, that Eliza and her child and later her husband, first of all, [32:19] are light skinned. Second of all, they end up finding freedom and peace in Canada. They don't [32:24] find it in the American north. They find it in Canada. And then of course there is the sale of [32:29] uncle Tom going south and his attempt to protect, especially a young black woman from the sexual [32:37] predations of a white man and, and where that all goes. That's part of the whole story, but that's [32:43] actually not what I wanted to talk to you about today. Why that book was so important was per, [32:49] first of all, first of all, for its literary and political import. But the pieces I didn't tell you [32:54] there, if you've read the book are to my mind, the most important. So when the, the, the story is [33:04] centers around this idea of the fugitive slave act, the idea that, you know, you, you have to return a [33:14] fugitive to the American south. And one of the things that happens is that Eliza, when she runs away, [33:21] goes to, uh, for shelter to a home and it's the home of a congressman and the congressman's wife, [33:30] um, shelters Eliza and her child. And as they do so, the congressman actually says to his wife, [33:41] you know, it's been a while now, do you think it would be okay to give Henry some of our son's [33:51] clothing? And the theme right there is established that this is about mothers and children and doing [34:01] what's right. Because the story there is that the congressman and his wife had lost a baby as [34:07] everybody expected to lose a baby in the 19th century, until we get the advent of penicillin. [34:12] In the 20th century, everybody expected to lose, lose children and they had lost a child. And here [34:18] he is a man who had voted for the fugitive slave act saying to his wife, you locked up our son's [34:26] clothing when he died because you couldn't face it. I get that, but we need to help this child. [34:33] And it was the coming together of the morality and the, the maternal instinct there overriding [34:43] the politicians who had put in place the fugitive slave act that sets the important tone of the [34:49] novel, because the next piece of it that you probably have heard of, even if you haven't read [34:52] the book in the process of being sold down the river, that's where we get that expression sold down [34:58] the river. Uncle Tom, um, gets purchased by, uh, uh, uh, guy who has a, he's kind of a, not an, [35:07] I mean, he's, he's a rich guy. Who's kind of a, uh, flake, to be honest. That's my 21st century [35:13] interpretation of St. Clair. But, um, uh, the guy has this beautiful little baby, a little girl, [35:21] not a baby. She's a little girl. Um, her name is Eva, little Eva. Right. And she, um, um, [35:30] at one point she falls overboard and he jumps in and saves her. And they, they start to bond [35:36] over their Christian faith because this is obviously a morality play as well. And he's [35:39] going to end up, as I say, being like Jesus, but she promises that she's going to free him. Um, [35:46] and she, and St. Clair realizes he needs to free, um, free uncle Tom. He dies before he can do it. [35:53] But in the process of all this experiment between their relationship between these three people, [35:59] little Eva dies and little Eva dies in, um, in a scene that is, um, like to our modern eyes, [36:12] way over the top. I mean, there's like angels come down and there's like singing and, you know, [36:18] and she's beautiful on the pillow and, you know, and you read, and, you know, people usually read [36:22] it and just roll their eyes, but Harriet Beecher Stowe had lost a child herself within, I think it [36:29] was a year of writing uncle Tom's cabin and, you know, losing a child is never pretty and it's [36:36] certainly never neat and beautiful. And what she was doing in that scene is she was offering an idealized [36:43] image of a child's death, sort of to bring comfort to people, but also to create a bond between people [36:51] like Eliza, whose children were sold away from them and people like, um, St. Clair, whose child dies [36:58] or people like Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose child dies. Okay. So why am I going on about this to the [37:04] degree I am? And there's much more to the plot. There's other people involved and so on. But the reason [37:09] this book is so important is because Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote it aimed at middle-class white [37:18] women. The book included them in American politics in a way that they could never have been included [37:26] before. She's playing on this idea of reforming society. Women don't have the vote and they don't [37:32] at that point really have a political voice. They're going to really develop that political voice in the [37:37] 1850s and especially in the 1860s in part because of people like her, but she writes this book and [37:45] people devour it. This book becomes the best seller in the 19th century outside of the Bible. I mean, this [37:52] book is the book to read. And then it goes beyond that because in the 1850s in the coming out of the 1830s [38:00] and the 1840s going to the 1850s theater was considered kind of lower class. Like that's where the [38:05] drinker, the guys drinking, you know, stuff hung out and they were spitting and they were, you know, [38:12] sex workers. And it was just not a, it was not a place she went. But this book was so popular. [38:18] Theater owners decided to clean up their theaters and they did that. They started having matinees so [38:25] that women and children could go. They started to try and include middle-class men. And the themes of [38:32] Uncle Tom's cabin just sweep across the country. You know, everybody goes, we have a diary of a guy who [38:39] was a salesman, a door, you know, a traveling salesman. And he said, I went and I cried my eyes [38:47] out when little Eva died. And I was crying, you know, I was urging Eliza across that, across that frozen [38:55] river. And, you know, it, it, I got it. It all came alive to me. I, I understand now why enslavement [39:03] is such a horrible thing and why we have to fight it. And that, you know, you all know the apocryphal [39:11] story of course, of Lincoln saying to Harriet Beecher Stowe, so you're the little lady who started [39:16] this great big war. In fact, what Uncle Tom's cabin does is it uses a cultural product. It uses a book [39:26] and in a play and the stories and there's a doll of little Eva and her counterpart, her black [39:34] counterpart, Topsy. And, you know, there's, there's all these things that spread the message, even from [39:42] people who are not politically engaged in politics, it spreads the political message that a system that [39:50] tears children away from their mothers is not okay. And the men who supported that when faced [39:58] with the morality of it, recognize that it's not okay. And that becomes, that's 52 that comes out. [40:06] And then in 54, when Congress passes the Kansas Nebraska act, which overturns the Missouri compromise [40:15] that's kept human enslavement out of the Northern part of the Louisiana Purchase. [40:22] They, they, they understand what's going on. They recognize that this is an attempt of the elite [40:28] enslavers to take over the whole system. You know, they've been primed by Uncle Tom's cabin [40:33] to recognize that that in taking over of the, the Louisiana Purchase, because the, the that's what the [40:43] Missouri Compromise covered, because in 1820, we didn't yet have the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. [40:47] It's 1848. So they recognize that if that happens, the entire country is going to become based in human [40:55] enslavement because the Southerners are going to work with the Westerners, because they're all going to [40:58] have an interest in protecting their property and human beings. And then they're going to overaw the North [41:05] in, in the House of Representatives. And it's going to become the United States of America is going to [41:10] become a slave holding nation, which is why Abraham Lincoln stays up all that night when it passes, [41:15] when the bill passes, the bill becomes, passes Congress. And he's like, this is a, you know, [41:21] we, what are we going to do? We got to do something. We're going to lose American democracy. [41:26] Now, why am I telling you this about Uncle Tom's cabin now? I mean, it's a, it's a classic novel. [41:32] Some of you may have read it. Others of you may read it now and be disappointed because it's very much [41:37] of its time, right? It's a flowery, you know, I mean, it's a great novel, but you, you got to be [41:44] into that kind of great novels. Um, and, and I'm sorry, I am my master's degree is in American [41:48] literature. So I like, I love that stuff, but not every, it's not everybody's cup of tea. [41:53] Why am I saying that to you? Because what Harriet Beecher Stowe did is she reflected a dramatic change [42:04] in the American demographics of, you know, the men going off to the cities and going out west and [42:10] women suddenly taking on a much more public role in reforming American society, herself included. [42:17] She, she represented that demographic change that then affected culture in such a way that she primed [42:27] the nation for the rise of somebody like Abraham Lincoln and the eventual ratification of the 13th [42:34] amendment to the constitution that outlawed human enslavement except as punishment for crime for [42:41] which somebody has been duly convicted. As you know, I have a real problem with that clause. I, that's [42:46] one of the things I would like to see us clean up in the future. Um, so why am I saying that to you now? [42:54] I am going to make an argument now that what we are seeing around us, even though we're focused on [43:01] tonight's voting and, and all that, what we are seeing around us really big picture for the history [43:08] books is something very similar. That is, there has been in my lifetime, um, a demographic shift in [43:20] the American people that I think is playing out now. And what I mean by that is that coming out of [43:28] World War II, you had women who had been very active in American politics in first the new deal [43:35] under people like Francis Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt, and then in World War II, people who [43:41] were in the women's army corps or the waves or worked in the factories or did any of the many things to [43:48] mobilize on the home front or to fight in the war that had enabled American democracy to survive [43:54] against both fascism and later communism. And so they, they then began to demand equal rights in [44:04] the United States in a much more effective way than their mothers had been able to do or their [44:10] grandmothers. And when I say that there has been a demographic change, the women who are alive now, [44:17] especially those, um, not the real young ones, but women who grew up in as baby boomers, especially the [44:25] late into the baby boomers lived in a world in which thanks to the arrival of reliable birth control in [44:33] 1965 with the contraceptive pill and with the IUD, they had control over their reproduction, which meant [44:43] that they could join the workforce on, uh, uh, similar, um, on a, on similar terms to men. And then [44:52] with the, uh, passage in 1972 of the, of title nine, um, which everybody thinks is about sports and sports [45:02] are included in it. But what it really says is that any educational facility, educational institution that [45:08] takes money from the federal government must treat men and women equally. What that did in 72 colleges [45:16] at, and school prep schools, for example, had already begun to, um, to, uh, okay, all of a sudden, [45:23] I can't think of the word. It's not integrate, um, to, uh, to let women go into male institutions. [45:29] I don't know why I can't think of that word right now. Um, they had already started to do that before [45:34] 72, but in 72 with title nine, what happens is professional schools no longer have quotas on how [45:44] many women can be in a law school, for example, or in a business school. And those, uh, quotas in [45:51] the past had been very low. It would be usually between one and 5% of the graduating class could [45:57] be women in those institutions. And with title nine, that's going to shift to 50%. And so what you saw [46:04] was women going into the professions, into a professional institution in the 1970s and into [46:10] the 1980s in the big wave of baby boomers. And that big wave of baby boomers is the reason that we had [46:17] in the 1990s, the, um, highest economic sustained economic growth outside of, you know, a post-war period [46:25] sustained economic growth in the, in modern history. And that's because you had this big ball of people [46:31] going through the economic system. And that was the height of their productivity. And a lot of those [46:35] people were women that now, as that is, as that group is aging, you are now seeing those same women [46:45] who thanks to modern medicine have 40, I'm sorry, uh, 30, 20 to 30 years after their careers are over, [46:53] after their children are, um, grown or after their careers or wherever they want them to be [46:58] to do something different. Now, men have the same thing by the way, but men seem to be taking [47:03] a bit of a different path, not all of them, but some of them certainly are taking a different path [47:07] than women. But what I think you are seeing in today's demographic in today's politics is those [47:14] women looking at the rights that they grew up under that they gained in 65 and in the seventies and the [47:21] professions they went into in the eighties and nineties, they are seeing those being stripped [47:26] away by the modern Republican party and by MAGA Republicans, including by the way, the right to [47:32] vote is now, um, bandied about as something that the MAGA Republicans want to get rid of. They want [47:37] to get rid of women's voting. They're seeing that happen. And as that happens, they are bringing to the [47:43] political, um, sphere, their skills that they developed in all those years, their connections, [47:50] their friendships, the, their political, their professional connections. Some of them have money, [47:56] but all of them have skills. And what they are doing with those skills is they are creating the same [48:04] kinds of coalitions that you saw way back in the 1850s under, um, you know, people who had been [48:13] inspired by uncle Tom's cabin. They are coming together in these big coalitions that are not [48:19] necessarily being seen by those who are following politics in the way that American pundits have [48:24] followed politics since the 1960s, which I don't really have time to talk about someday I will. And I [48:30] have in the past as well, they are coming together in these coalitions and they are changing the [48:36] trajectory of the American nation, not just a midterm, not just a party, not just an era, [48:44] but the American nation as a whole and how that's going to play out, um, in this midterm. I don't know, [48:53] you know, maybe we'll get both houses. Maybe the, it's going to be a tsunami. Maybe it's not going to [48:58] be, maybe it's not going to be as big as we thought it would. But when I look at the parallels [49:04] in these dramatic demographic changes from the 1840s and the, the 19 or where we now, the, the 2020s, [49:14] when I look at those parallel demographics, I'm really a lot less concerned in the long term [49:22] about what happens today. Um, I am very interested in what certainly seems to me to be building [49:30] momentum behind a dramatic change in American society that looks a lot like what happened in [49:38] the 1850s. And so there's my story for you about Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I suspect you didn't expect [49:46] to hear about today, but also what maybe we can learn from that and how much you need to focus [49:55] on your fear of whether or not your favorite candidate is going to win tonight. Um, and look [50:04] instead at the fact that look at the, the genie that is no longer in the bottle, you know, look around [50:12] you, do you really think that this power among the American people that has young Americans marching [50:18] to the polls when they're, um, when they're polling places have been shot or that has people standing [50:24] in line for hours or that has some of the highest early voting we've ever seen, or that has people [50:31] turning out in huge numbers, or that has people putting, I voted stickers on memorials to the people [50:37] who have been killed by ice, not just Alex Preddy and, uh, Renee Good, but some of the other people [50:44] who have been killed by ice. Um, the, this momentum that you are seeing that has got Republicans running [50:52] scared and Democrats now making inroads in Florida and Mississippi and Arkansas and Texas and all the [51:01] places that seemed unreachable 10 years ago. I look at all that and I think, [51:08] can you really put that genie back in the bottle and, and can you do it with somebody like Donald [51:16] Trump or somebody like JD Vance or somebody like, um, Ron DeSantis or somebody like Ted Cruz? [51:22] And, and I, I don't see it. I don't see it. So as I say, when you are worried about tonight, [51:32] um, think about what life looked like in 1850, for example, when it looked as if the federal [51:41] government was going to force people in the North to allow people to, to kidnap their neighbors, [51:50] many of whom, by the way, had never been enslaved. I mean, there are, there is a very good historian [51:55] who believes that more people got kidnapped and forced into enslavement than ever made it out [52:00] along the underground railroad. Um, imagine being there in the 1850s and sort of thinking, [52:07] oh my God, what just happened to our country? And then reading this book and crying over little Eva [52:13] and, you know, being heartbroken when uncle Tom dies and, and so on. Um, and then watching [52:21] the Kansas Nebraska act and people turning out and saying, we're not going to live like this [52:27] and putting so many anti-Nebraska people in office that by in 54 and 55, that by 56, [52:36] there was a new political party on the horizon. That was the Republican party. And they've faileded [52:41] such a strong candidate in 56 that had the know nothing party, the American party, not fielded a [52:48] former president, Millard Fillmore on a program. I'm sorry, on a platform also designed to hold back [52:55] human enslavement to push back against the slave power. They would have won. [53:00] Then imagine you see, um, the, the, in 56, you see the enslavers beating a congressman almost to death [53:08] on the floor of the Senate. And then you're watching, you know, your candidate almost win, [53:13] but not. And then 58, once again, you're seeing the rise of this upstart from Illinois, who's got a high [53:22] squeaky voice and he's a homely man. And, and yet he makes a lot of sense by going back to the, [53:29] the principles of the framers and the founders, um, who, who put together the declaration of [53:35] independence and said that the law should treat everybody equally and give them equal access to [53:40] resources and give them a right to us to a say in their government. And then you think about him [53:46] highly enough that when he runs for president in 1860, you cast your ballot for him. And you look [53:55] at the fact that most Southern states didn't even offer anybody the ability to vote for him. And then [54:01] you stand behind him when he decides that the United States must end human enslavement, accept his [54:07] punishment for a crime. And in November of 1863, um, gives the, the Gettysburg Address, uh, urging [54:18] Americans to make sure that government of the people by the people and for the people does not perish [54:24] from the earth. And that instead we have a new birth of freedom. And you think about that and how quickly [54:32] that happened in historical time. And you imagine where we are now and you think, oh my God, I can't [54:40] live through tonight. And why is this taking so long? And I want to get rid of Trump tomorrow. And, [54:45] and I'm terrified of JD Vance and so on. And you think, you know what, if they could do it then, [54:52] and if there were demographics that were working so much in their favor that they probably weren't aware [54:58] of, and you look at us now and you look at the demographics we have, and now women can vote and [55:04] women have the skills to turn people out quite obviously, having looked at this election, you look [55:10] at that and you think we are in the middle of an extraordinary time, a historical time, but it's [55:19] awfully hard to imagine how in the long run, we don't see the same kind of new birth of freedom [55:28] that they saw in the 1850s and the 1860s. All right, there's my bedtime story for you. I'm [55:36] maybe going to check the news, but we're not going to know anything for a long time. And, and finally, [55:42] I would like to thank all of you who have done so much to try and make this election go the way it needs [55:50] to go. And I just, I'm so proud to be part of this group of people, so proud to be walking alongside [55:58] you. And I hate to say it to you, but ever so eager after we take a few days off to hit the ground [56:06] running for 2028, because this game is not over yet. No matter what happens tonight, we still are [56:12] going to have to keep our shoulders to the wheel and working alongside you all. I'm looking forward [56:17] to it. Thank you for being here. If you'd like to tune in live, I record these chats on Tuesday [56:34] and Thursday at 6pm main time on both my YouTube channel and my Facebook page. If you want to hear [56:42] more from me, I write letters from an American every night. It's available on Substack and on Facebook. [56:50] And the audio version of the nightly letter is available the following day, wherever you get your [56:55] podcasts. And finally, on Saturday mornings, I talk with Dr. Joanne Freeman, the historian of the [57:02] early Republic, professor and dear friend about history and politics. We call our talks What the [57:09] Heck Just Happened, and you can find them on YouTube. Politics Chat is produced by Lauren Westfall, [57:17] music by Andrea von Kampen.