For daily news, updates, and analysis, be sure to follow us on Instagram. If you are able to support independent journalism, please make a tax-deductible donation to News Not Noise here.
Election Day can feel like the finish line. We vote, we wait, and we hope the results will change things. But even when the candidates we support win, the problems we want them to solve are still there. What should we expect from the people we elect, and what’s our role after casting a ballot?
of Sharon Says So and on Substack joined me to talk about what comes next. We discuss what a Democratic victory would mean, what government can realistically deliver on affordability and health care, and why meaningful progress has always required working with people we disagree with.
We also talk about preparing for postelection backlash and legal challenges, and how to stay involved without burning out. Sharon brings some much-needed perspective, humor, and a reminder that ordinary people make history — and need to rest, too.
Watch our conversation at the top of this newsletter. Below is a transcript, lightly edited for clarity.
Jessica:
Sharon, first of all. Hello. How are you doing on this very high stress day?
Sharon:
Merry Election Day to you. Jessica. Solidarity. It’s been a long slog. I’m doing well. How are you?
Jessica:
I’m feeling good. I actually expected there to be much more chaos around the election itself than we’re seeing — sort of ICE out or troops in the streets — and it’s really very normal. Even the messes at the election polling centers are contained to some specific areas.
Sharon:
They have been at least attempting, from my vantage point, to message: Don’t worry. We have a plan in place. Your vote still counts. Fill out the paper ballot. I guess there’s one place that has a shortage of paper ballots, but it does seem like they have been trained for redundancy. What to do if there are problems.
Jessica:
Totally. When you hear about these problems, everybody gets upset. Then one place — it’s like, there is a paper jam, and another was like a wheelchair ran over a thing. You know, stuff happens, always.
Sharon:
Yeah. But what I think is great is that we have now been trained as voters to be aware of problems. If there’s a thing, here’s what to do. The fact that voters are even like — you guys, the paper is jamming. The fact that they want to cast their ballot so much. I actually find that heartening that we’re sounding the alarm about a paper jam.
Jessica:
I totally agree, and I think you’ll agree with this — that in a way, the silver lining of this bizarre error we’re living through with all the crises is that it has made everybody vigilant and aware of what you do. It’s kind of empowered people. They’re no longer saying, who’s going to fix this? They’re like, what can I do to fix this, right?
Sharon:
I am going to make sure that my vote is counted, and if anything goes awry, I am going to let somebody know. I actually think that’s a great attitude to have. Nothing will stop me from voting.
Jessica:
Here we go.
Sharon:
Yeah.
Jessica:
You answer people’s questions about government all day, almost every day. I hope you get a few days off. I don’t see it happening. This election day, what are people asking you that tells you something about the larger mood in the country?
Sharon:
I’m still getting a ton of questions about specifics — about, like, “Okay, I forgot to change my address. What do I do?” And to me, that also speaks to exactly what I was just saying, that people very much want their voices to be heard. That they feel as though potentially things are not going the way they want them to go.
Consequently, they feel like, “Nothing will stop me from participating.” So even just the questions about things like, “I moved. Should I go back to my old precinct?” To me, that is indicative of this larger mindset of I will vote come hell or high water. Give me some specific tools that I can use to make sure that my ballot is cast.
I’m hearing a lot of that, and I am still hearing, as I would imagine you are hearing this as well, a lot of concern about what tomorrow is going to look like, what the flurry of potential lawsuits is going to look like, what kind of shenanigans we’re going to be up against later on in this week.
People very much want their voices to be heard. They feel as though things are not going the way they want them to go — consequently, they feel like, “Nothing will stop me from participating.”
Jessica:
I heard something that’s very cool. And I think you and your folks will be glad to hear this too, is that you think about all those lawyers that the Trump administration purged from the DOJ. A lot of them have gone into private practice, but they have come back and been working to protect the election ever since.* *They are on call today and going forward to deal with all those lawsuits, in addition to legal outlets all over the country. I mean, the preparation has been intense, extensive.
Sharon:
I have heard from lawyers at a number of organizations that have gamed out dozens of potential scenarios and have paperwork ready to go for every single state in all of these dozens of scenarios so they can just be like — Ohio, scenario seven, here’s your paperwork, dude. Like they already have — It’s done.
Jessica:
That’s great.* *This has been a lot of work. If today goes smoothly, it’s because a lot of people spend a lot of time preparing.
There’s a lot of expectation that Democrats are going to have somewhere between a strong to a very strong to a tsunami night. If they do have any version of those, how do you think they should distinguish a mandate for their ideas from voters simply wanting to check on Trump?
Sharon:
One of the things the data is showing us is that people are overwhelmingly voting on the economy. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 to 80% of voters are most concerned about the economy.
Of course, voters always care about the economy. But this economy in particular is very problematic for people. We still have very high inflation, gas prices, these sort of kitchen table issues that actually really do matter to average Americans. I do think Democrats are going to take that as a sign of, we need to do something about the economy. Now, that is the exact same thing as reining in Donald Trump.
This is not like the Iranian hostage crisis that Jimmy Carter dealt with, where he had external forces outside of his control, couldn’t get them back, tried to negotiate. We’re not dealing with a 9/11 situation. This situation is largely of our own creation. And so when you’re talking about a democratic mandate, the mandate is to fix Trump’s problems.* *That’s how they are largely going to view it.
Jessica:
You know, you recently wrote that public goods don’t have to be profitable to be valuable. And I’m wondering on that note: If Democrats do gain power, how do they think about what they should deliver? Because there’s a lot they could do that is sort of investing in the economy for the future. And those goods arrive maybe ten years down the road, and then people need relief right now.
So what do you think voters should realistically expect them to be able to change over the next few months when they — if they take office?
Sharon:
Well, of course,you don’t want to make pie in the sky promises, where you’re like — everybody’s going to get free child care, free health care, free college, things that a lot of a lot of people actually would love to have. You don’t want to make these kinds of pie in the sky promises. And yet those kinds of issues are exactly the kinds of things that hit people in their pocket book.
While it is more difficult to dial back gas prices when you’re in a market economy, there are ways that you can create programs that help offset the cost of the increased cost of living. So I do think Democrats are going to potentially really work on what are becoming cost of living issues for people, particularly when it comes to health care — Obamacare.
The Republicans have always hated Obamacare. They still hate Obamacare. There are huge issues with a lot of people’s policies expiring under the Affordable Care Act, a lot of health insurance or health organizations no longer accepting exchange based programs. People who are on social media talking about their child who is sick with cancer, unable to get cancer treatment at their local children’s hospital because they are on an exchange based insurance program, and their local children’s hospital will no longer take any of them. So I do think health care is going to be top of mind for a lot of people as something that could be potentially addressed.
Some of the other issues, of course, are harder to address unless you deal with some structural things. Like bringing the cost of college down might actually be more challenging than helping people afford health care.
Jessica:
That’s a really good, clear distinction. You know, I want to switch gears to something that’s happened more recently, which is the fights within the Democratic Party. We have seen a lot of these divisions break out into some very uncomfortable stuff at the very end. They’ve become remarkably personal.
What I’m wondering is, as an historian, have Democrats lost sight of what a coalition is? Have we had times in history where people understood in America that a collection of people who disagree about important things can still work together? Or are we at a different era where disagreements now are so fundamental that expecting folks to work together sometimes is just unrealistic, even within the same party?
Human nature has not changed. We are not going to suddenly find a pool of tens of millions of people who 100% agree with that. It doesn’t exist. So we have to ask ourselves, do we want to make change, or do we want to just be right and have everything still suck? Those are the choices.
Sharon:
I love that you asked this question because I very much believe that, especially the left part of the political spectrum, Democrats in the United States have developed this sense of ideological purity in the sense of if we don’t agree on the following 25 issues, then we cannot work together at all. And that is simply not how almost any important thing that has happened in the United States is legislatively. That is how almost none of them have gotten done. We would have never achieved the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act — you know, any of the things that we would look at and be like, that was important. I’m glad we did it. That always came through coalition building, as much as people hate to hear that, because we are definitely in an era where we do not want to work with people we do not like — you believe the following 25 terrible things and I do not want to work with you. You should go away. You’re wrong. You know, the social media discourse is very much like: you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong. And we cannot have any kind of conversation.
Now, I’m not saying we should tolerate hate. I’m not saying people’s identities should be up for debate. I’m not saying we should be fine with antisemitism or Islamophobia. I’m not saying we need to tolerate those kinds of bad behaviors. But I am saying that if we want to move the needle legislatively for the good of the American people, we are going to have to — on both sides of the aisle — set aside some of these notions of what it actually looks like to work with people.
Where did we get the idea that we all need to be in lockstep, perfect harmony, braiding each other’s hair over a campfire to be able to do anything meaningful? It’s actually going to require us being like, “Yeah, he’s weird, but he agrees with me on the roads and bridges. So we’re doing the deal.” That’s how it has always worked.
Human nature has not changed. We are not going to suddenly find a pool of tens of millions of people who 100% agree with that. It doesn’t exist. So we have to ask ourselves, do we want to make change, or do we want to just be right and have everything still suck? Those are the choices.
Jessica:
I just love how you framed that. I think for folks listening, the real work comes in hearing what Sharon said and not thinking about the person who disagrees with you. Who needs to learn that lesson? But to think about how do I refuse to work with someone else because they’re disagreeing with me on something? And where, in my own internal barometer, do I need to recalibrate so I can do that?
Sharon:
I don’t want anyone to hear Sharon say, “You have to give all your money and your passwords to strangers who want you dead.” I’m not saying that, okay? I’m not saying share all your deepest, darkest secrets with your sworn enemies.
But this is not going to be fixed by some other entity. This is going to take all of us to be willing to commit to doing the actual work, which is sometimes working with the weird guy who also happens to agree with you on roads and bridges.
Jessica:
Right, exactly. I love how you say that. Think of the weird guy. So to that larger point, I think your work reminds us that ordinary people do change history. For somebody who’s voting today and thinks, “Great, I’ve done my part, I’m exhausted.” What is the next useful thing they can do?
We are not done yet. When tomorrow dawns, even if things go really, really swimmingly, we have more work to do. That means taking care of yourself. That means making sure that you are still ready to participate, that you’re still ready to do your part.
Sharon:
I love that question too. It is almost like you should go into journalism Jessica. You should give that some thought.
Starting tomorrow we are going to start seeing the rancor really ramp up again. It’s going to start tomorrow. There are people who will win tonight, are going to have the celebratory moments, and we are going to see a strong backlash against whatever happens. This is historically how United States politics works.
Remember when Barack Obama won and people who supported him and loved him felt like, “Oh my gosh, hope has returned to the earth. This is incredible.” The backlash against Barack Obama is actually still being felt. It is still being felt specifically when we’re talking about Obamacare. You see people on social media all the time saying there’s been no more president more divisive than Barack Obama. People on the right often feel like Obama was, you know, their biggest opp.
I do think we need to be prepared for people who feel very, very angry about the election results. That is going to be a thing that we’re going to have to contend with tomorrow, and we are going to have to work on that as a work on that together. That’s not going to go away because the side maybe we prefer wins or the side that we were hoping would win doesn’t win. We have to deal with the reality that half the country — maybe a little bit less — is going to feel upset tomorrow. And what does that look like moving forward? We have to prepare potentially for a slog when it comes to the lawsuits that we know are coming. We know the lawsuits are coming.
It’s a little bit like being a doctor in the sense that patients are always better off in almost all instances being told the truth by their physician than having the truth hidden from them by their physician. So I’m just telling everybody the truth: We are not done yet. When tomorrow dawns, even if things go really, really swimmingly, we have more work to do. That means taking care of yourself. That means making sure that you are still ready to participate, that you’re still ready to do your part. And that means like, “Okay, I have to rest, I have to eat, I have to disengage from whatever it is that is raising my anxiety.” I have to listen to trusted, trusted sources of news and not just…