Monday Morning Politics: Election Post-Mortem

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend if you were off and if you worked this weekend like my amazing board engineer, Juliana Fonda, worked on Thanksgiving Day. If you work this weekend to make it all safe and fun and convenient for everyone else, thank you for your service.

I noticed over the last few days that some updated exit polls from the election have come out now that almost all the votes have been counted in the presidential race beyond those that were enough to call a winner on November 6th. With some downtime of my own this weekend, not on deadline for a show, I thought I would take a deep dive into some of those numbers. I did some reading. I'm going to share with you some things that I read that you might find interesting.

First of all and maybe most important, this was a close presidential election, not a landslide, and not necessarily a national realignment as some people have called it. The latest NBC News count of the total vote has Trump winning the national popular vote by only around one-and-a-half points. 1.6 points to be exact. Close. An ABC News analysis state-by-state says if Harris had just gotten 1.8% more votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, she would have won the election. That one is worth saying again.

If Harris had gotten 1.8% more votes in Pennsylvania and in Wisconsin and in Michigan, that little bit more in just those three states, she would have won the election. If nothing else, we can say we are a pretty evenly divided country as measured by this election. Still, Trump got about three million votes more than he did in 2020 by the counts I'm seeing. Harris got around seven million fewer than Biden 2020.

The decline in Democratic turnout remains probably a bigger factor than people who shifted their votes despite the shifts getting most of the headlines, but some shifts did take place and are also important and contributed to Trump's percentage point gain. Now, I'll give you some of the interesting, specific results that I saw in the latest exit poll analysis from NBC. These will go by pretty fast, so listen up, and you'll see which ones you find interesting enough to retain. Then we'll talk to NPR's Domenico Montanaro.

In some cases with these numbers, I compared them to the 2020 exit polls, which I got from CNN. You ready? Women made up 53% of the electorate, compared to just 47% for men. Trump won the election despite that six-point turnout advantage for women and the gender gap that we all know exists. We'll talk more about the gender gap in a sec. The white chair of the electorate went up by a few points. This is still largely a white electorate, 71% of the voters with 11% being Black, 11% Latino, and 3% Asian American.

According to NBC, the largest share of the electorate by age is people 45 to 64. A third of the electorate was in that age range, 45 to 64. For all we talk about the rising millennials and Xers, for all we talk about the classic bulge in the population, that's the baby boomers, still mostly alive. Third of the electorate, the biggest share by age group was in that 45 to 64 age range. Trump did better among that group than any other, winning them by 11 points. By comparison, he was only even or below with all the other age groups.

If you are, let's say, Gen X or a very late boomer, your peers did a lot to elect Donald Trump. For voters under 30, we have a big gender disconnect. You've probably heard this one. Women under 30 voted for Harris by a 23-point margin. For men under 30, it was basically a tie. This is a big deal. I wonder if it's going to be harder to get a politically compatible date now, never mind finding a politically compatible heterosexual spouse if men and women see the world so differently. 23-point difference for people under 30.

Sure enough, here's a related stat. Parents with children by gender. Trump did a lot better with fathers. Harris did better with mothers. Harris only won 38% of the dads. That's a full 10-point drop among the dads from 2020, but she won the mom's vote. It was only by a few points and down five in that category from 2020. Parents with children trended Trump. Again, that gender gap, a 12-point difference between the moms and the dads.

One more related category. Maybe a crucial one in this election. Trump won white suburbanites. He got 62% of white suburban men, 53% of white suburban women. Again, about a 10-point gender gap there. Harris needed to do better in the burbs, a big fertile area for Democrats in recent elections as most of you probably know. It's still the biggest electoral prize by area.

The exit poll found 52% of voters live in the suburbs, a majority, in the suburbs compared to just 29% in urban areas and 19% in rural ones. The college degree/non-college degree gap grew in this election compared to 2020, mostly among voters of color. Harris gained five points among non-white college grads, but she lost eight points among voters of color with no college degree, a meaningful drop from Biden in 2020.

The number of voters calling themselves "moderate," this is interesting, grew by a few points to 42% of the voters. Those self-described moderates were the biggest share of the electorate according to this exit poll at 42%. Conservatives were down a few points to 35% of the voters. Liberals were down slightly as well at 23% identifying that way. Moderates are now the biggest self-described group of voters and conservatives still outnumber liberals.

Voters by family income. Harris and Trump were about tied among voters making less than $50,000 a year and those making above $$50,000. In the lower income group, that was a drop for the Democrats by seven points compared to 2020. Voters under $50,000 move toward Trump or a lot of them from 2020 didn't show up. Breaking out those above $50,000 a little further. Trump won voters making $50,000 to $100,000. Harris won those making $100,000 or more.

Just a few points difference in each case, but it continues apparently to show the trend reversal from the past. Higher incomes are now mildly associated with the Democrats, lower with the Republicans, but I don't see necessarily that this is based on people's view of their economic policies as opposed to more cultural things. We'll ask Domenico what he thinks about that.

Votes by religion. This is very interesting, mostly in terms of how many voters now say they have no religion. That was a quarter of the electorate professing no religious affiliation. Among those who do, no surprises here, Trump won Christians by 20-plus points. Harris continued the Democrats' dominant among Jews, 78% of Jews, according to NBC. Some other surveys had that a little lower, but still in the 70% range at least.

Jews stayed a Democratic voting block, but Jews, remember, were only 2% of the electorate. That's the stat in the NBC exit poll, 2% of the electorate, which is similar to their share of the overall population. This exit poll did not have a percentage for Muslim voters. I presume that means the percentage was smaller than 2% and hard to get a number on because of sample size.

LGBTQ. 8% of voters identified themselves as gay, lesbian, bi, or transgender. That's consistent with a lot of population surveys, 8%. Harris did much better in that group, not surprisingly, and much better than Biden did in 2020. It was 64% of the LGBTQ vote for Biden back then, 86% this year for Harris. No surprise, I guess, considering how much the Trump campaign centered LGBTQ, especially trans people, as threatening.

Here's another interesting one. Bad for the Democrats this year. Trump's share of first-time voters went up by 20 points compared to the last election. He got 64% of first-time voters this year, says NBC. Last time, it was only 44%. The number of first-time voters also went down to just 8% of the electorate compared to 14% in 2020. We'll talk more about this in a minute with Domenico, who thinks low-propensity voters, people not that likely to vote at all, were a major reason Trump won the election.

Also really important, which issue mattered most to people who voted? The economy and the state of democracy were about tied for number one issue with about a third of the electorate each citing it as number one. The economy or the state of democracy. They basically canceled each other out. If the exit poll is right, Trump won 80% of the economy voters. Harris won 80% of the democracy voters.

On another question they asked, do you think democracy in the United States is threatened? 73% of everybody said, "Yes, threatened," but Trump voters said that as much as Harris voters did. Democrats may see Trump as literally a fascism risk, but Republicans thought Democrats were undermining democracy too. Also, immigration and abortion were about tied for issues number three and four in importance to voters, but those who cited immigration favored Trump overwhelmingly on that issue.

Those who cited abortion curiously only gave Harris a four-point margin for who they said they trusted more on the issue of abortion rights. That is interesting too. Was your vote mainly for your candidate or against the other one? Most Trump voters were voting for him. Most Harris voters were voting to stop Trump, not for Harris per se. That happened in the other Trump elections too.

Asked if they think either candidate's views are too extreme, Trump came out worse there, but only by a little. 53% of voters said Trump's views are too extreme. 48% said Harris's views are too extreme. Basically, each party's voters think the other party is too extreme. There are some interesting exit poll stats in a little more detail than maybe you've heard them before. We have the luxury of time in this long-form show, so I thought you might enjoy or learn something from that closer look.

With us now is NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro on some of those numbers and maybe some other Monday morning politics. Kash Patel for FBI director, Joe Biden pardons Hunter Biden, Pete Hegseth's mom writing that he was an abuser of women. Ukraine, the Middle East, Canada, and Mexico, all in flux with the transition, and Charles Kushner for ambassador to France.

Jared's dad, Charles Kushner, who Trump pardoned for a variety of crimes. Charles Kushner admitted in his plea agreement that he had a prostitute seduce his brother-in-law and then told the wife. Ah, diplomacy. Ah, family values. Listeners, the news did not take Thanksgiving weekend off even if you did. Hi, Domenico, thanks for some time today. We really appreciate you shaking off the holiday weekend cobwebs with us. Hello.

Domenico Montanaro: Hey, great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go down a few of the items that I ticked off in the intro. The first one that I mentioned, we'll take first. President-elect Trump won a comfortable electoral college majority. We all know that, but this was a really close election. Does it look increasingly like that to you as these almost final numbers roll in?

Domenico Montanaro: Yes, it's really interesting. Trump won what looks like about 49.8% of the vote, a little shy of a majority. Harris is at about 48.2%. Not all of the vote is in. We're at about 90%, 91% or so. There are still some provisional ballots to be counted in California, but that reflects really a very divided electorate as you had mentioned. I don't know that this was particular election where we saw a massive realignment.

I think there were a lot of different things at play here. You talked about low-propensity voters. I think Trump added as well with Latinos and some younger men, which helped him. There were very different reasons for why maybe some of these groups moved. We can only suppose why we don't necessarily exactly know, except from some of the reporting that we heard throughout the year.

Brian Lehrer: One big thing remains, the drop in the number of votes for Harris compared to Biden in 2020. It looks like a bigger statistical reason for her loss than voters who switched to Trump this year, or is that wrong? How much does it look like that to you?

Domenico Montanaro: Yes, I think that when it comes to the popular vote in particular, you look at places like New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, places with pretty big blue populations. Harris was off pretty significantly in a place like New York. It was, I think, almost 900,000 votes fewer than Biden got. Trump didn't pick up all of those. Trump got about 200,000 more or so from those.

You did see some blue voters stay home. Some Democrats stay home in some of these places. I think part of that is we see that in every election with the places that are outside of the targeted states, the most closely competitive states. This year, we had the smallest number of competitive states. We only had seven where, really, all the advertising money was spent. A place like Pennsylvania, it's really incredible. The amount of money that got spent was more overall in this election on political ads than ever before.

In the smallest amount of states, that means more money went to a smaller number of states. Pennsylvania saw more than $1 billion spent between the presidential and the Senate and House races. That's the most ever. No state has ever seen more than $1 billion in political spending. Congratulations to the people of Pennsylvania who no longer have to watch that stuff. Maybe that's what they were thankful for this year.

Brian Lehrer: Though we talk about the drop in voter turnout overall, I saw that Michigan and Wisconsin, two of the swing states obviously, set voter turnout records. Dearborn, Michigan was the center of uncommitted with its Muslim population concentration, but that's still one city in one state. Somehow, turnout in Michigan overall set a record. I don't know how to piece it all together. I don't know about Pennsylvania turnout, which you just mentioned. Maybe you do, but I don't know how to piece it together for an accurate big picture, even of Michigan. How much can you?

Domenico Montanaro: Yes, I think that there were clearly just, overall, some groups that Harris was off with. If you look in all of the suburban areas where Harris had to do well, she was way off from what she needed. The Philadelphia suburbs, the areas around Detroit, and even in a lot of the urban areas. Place like Maricopa County in Arizona, there was a huge switch. That's one place we may have actually seen more voters switch sides than it was just simply Harris voters or Democratic voters who didn't vote.

I think that there were a lot of different reasons in a lot of different places. Overall, Trump did better with his base. He got out more of those voters who don't vote often. It was a really controversial strategy from the Trump campaign. When we would talk to them, they would say that they were targeting what's known as zeros, ones, and twos, people who don't vote that often.

The campaigns rank all of us zero through five based on how much we vote. Five being the most that we vote, zero being that you don't vote at all and not consistently, and yet the campaign targeted these folks who are zeros, ones, and twos, the least likely to vote because they felt they were open to their message and that they could get them to turn out based on this cultural grievance message that Trump had been laying, that the country is changing to become more liberal in a way that a lot of people on the right see as problematic, see as a threat to their way of life. That certainly paid off for them.

The reason that they thought that that was a potential strategy that could work is because those lowest propensity voters, yes, you could look at them and say, "Well, they're not likely to vote, so why should I go after them?" People who are white voters without college degrees, for example, vote about 55% to 60% of them usually vote of eligible voters. That leaves a big number of them who are open to Trump's message potentially who could vote as opposed to white voters with college degrees vote about 85% to 90%. They felt that Democrats would be tapped out with that crowd. That was a gamble and it certainly paid off.

Brian Lehrer: I wondered as I looked at these exit polls, whether they accounted for those culture war issues even in the questions they asked. I didn't see the full template of what they were asking the voters in the exit polls, but the questions about people's top issues, I went down that list. It looked like it was multiple-choice. Economy, democracy, immigration, abortion rights, maybe one or two other things got listed.

I didn't see anything in the exit poll results, at least, that indicated that they asked about culture war issues like so-called save women's sports or how American history is taught or if businesses could refuse to serve gay people or diversity in hiring. Yet, the Republicans spent a reported $200 million on ads saying, "Harris was for they/them. Trump is for you." Did the exit polls fail to capture the pretty big vote that may have hung on these categories or was it not so much of a vote?

Domenico Montanaro: Well, I think that there was a mix. I would have liked to have seen a couple of questions in there that they have done in the past, for example, about whether or not you think somebody who's assigned their sex at birth should be referred to the pronoun based on their sex at birth, for example. They've asked that in the past. You saw large majorities of Republicans saying, "Yes, they should," that they shouldn't identify in different ways.

I do think that that was a big piece of this election for sure, to be able to get out those voters that Trump was trying to target to get out. Then there was the other side of this, which was economic, I think, for Asian-American voters, for example, who moved very substantially in a place like Nevada, for example. You saw a 52-point swing where Biden won them by almost 30 points in 2020. Then they swung completely the other direction. Of course, these exit polls have margins of error. Anything that wide, certainly outside the margin of error.

I think for groups that were Democratic-based groups, maybe Asian Americans, some Latina women, those are groups that may have been open to that economic message. I think Harris, in a lot of ways in talking to Democrats, feel like she was swimming upstream anyway because so many people felt that the country was just off on the wrong track. They felt that prices have been too high. For working-class voters, it was a big pinch for them. I think that there was a mix here where the culture issues were a big piece of a driving force for Trump voters. Then you had some of those voters that he added who were affected by that economic message.

Brian Lehrer: On the low-propensity voters and the economy, I thought that we could see those low-propensity voters in the polls throughout the campaign. I wrote about some of this in our newsletter in early October, our show's newsletter. People who didn't really like either candidate, who were undecided just a month before the election, so they were considered important and in play.

Those people who don't follow politics closely and were mostly concerned about the cost of living as their top issue. I thought I saw that group as a breakout group in the polls during the campaign. They tended to favor Trump because they saw him as the better economic hope. Would you say that was the case and both campaigns knew about those potential voters and the Trump campaign prioritized them more?

Domenico Montanaro: Yes, I don't know if the Trump campaign prioritized them more. Certainly, Harris tried to appeal to them with, I thought, a pretty clear message on the economy. I think the real problem for Harris in a lot of ways is that her words from 2019 in that campaign came back to hurt her because a lot of people I talked to who are close to her said that they felt like that campaign was a suit that didn't fit.

Even though she's stereotyped as somebody who's this San Francisco liberal, she really won as district attorney in San Francisco by running to the middle. They felt that her running the way that she did in 2019 really was more progressive than she was comfortable being. It showed because it seemed like she didn't have a core. Instead, in this campaign, she seemed very comfortable. She had an economic message. She had an economic plan. They were very much more moderate, more centrist ideas.

Because she was so unknown as far as views being solidified about her, people knew her name but didn't really know 100% how they felt about her that the Trump campaign in a really intense attack line and ads, whether it was the transgender ad or anything else, where they went after her was really to show an inconsistency and to appeal to people who might not be open to her message, whether there's some degree of race and gender involved in that or feeling like that they just didn't trust the Biden administration on immigration or the economy.

When you talk about undecided voters, I think it was an important point. Because when the exit poll did ask when you finally decided, about 6% of people said that they decided in either the last week or the last few days. Those voters vote by double digits for Trump. I think that that was a big piece of what I think you were looking at and how that showed up in the exit polls.

Brian Lehrer: All this second-guessing among the Democrats now about why Harris lost, do some of the leaders talk about Harris not emphasizing pocketbook issues enough in the end game rather than Trump being a threat to govern like a fascist, which seemed like the center of the end-game message to my eye?

Domenico Montanaro: Yes, I think that that was a piece of the message, I think, to certainly try to turn out her voters. Everybody's a Monday morning quarterback in these elections. Everybody has very clear ideas for what they think went wrong. It's not necessarily the case. A lot of times, the fact is you need the right candidate at the right time with the right environment to be able to win. I think that Democrats were just generally on the issues, swimming in uphill battle to start with in this campaign.

I think that if a Republican was in office when views of the economy were this negative, you might have seen a point-and-a-half difference in a Democrat's favor. We don't know that that's the case. I know that since 2004 at least, people have had the wrong solutions for all of these elections, whether it was saying that we're in a permanent red America after George W. Bush's win in 2004, only to see an economic collapse and a civil war in Iraq spiral out of control and then leading to Barack Obama's win, which even Republicans were concerned that we were going to be in a permanent liberal majority.

In 2012, Republicans were writing their autopsies about if they don't appeal to Latinos through comprehensive immigration reform, then you're going to see Republicans in a permanent minority with a shrinking base because of demography. Obviously, they went in a different direction. Trump wound up winning the highest percentage for any Republican with Latinos.

We don't know what the environment's going to be like in four years. I think it's going to be interesting because you're going to have two candidates who are not Donald Trump or Joe Biden. You're going to have people who have to set out their own vision for the country. Both Democrats and Republicans have challenges, whether it's holding together Trump's coalition or Democrats being able to set out a new vision for the country.

Brian Lehrer: It's a great point about this political whiplash, right? Remember what people thought about George W. Bush and how polarizing he was in his time and then, boom, Barack Obama. Then from Obama to Trump, really? Who knows what's going to happen in 2028? Listeners, as we continue with NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, your thoughts two months now after Election Day about what happened based on your reading, based on your own voting decision, based on what you learned from your red state uncle or your blue state aunt on Thanksgiving while trying not to choke on your cranberry sauce as they spoke?

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. We'll get to some of the political news from this weekend too, especially about these appointments or at least nominations from Trump continuing down, let's say, the controversial track and Joe Biden pardoning Hunter Biden. What do you think about that, listeners? 212-433-9692. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we talk with Domenico Montanaro, NPR senior political editor and correspondent. We have a full board of calls. We have texts coming in as we've been discussing some of the more granular results from the exit polls as so many more of the votes have come in since Election Day and the granular look we took in the intro at the beginning. Listener asked in a text message, Domenico, "Did they ask in these exit polls if they would vote for a woman?"

Domenico Montanaro: [chuckles] It's never that clear, right? I think that it's really hard to ask those kinds of questions because you wind up having a social bias where people will say, "Sure, of course, I would, but just not that woman." That doesn't really give you a genuine look on whether or not somebody has an implicit bias against women in leadership. I thought that one question that we asked in the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll just before the election may have revealed a little bit on this.

We asked people if they thought that when Harris is putting forward her positions in this campaign, is she doing so essentially sincerely or do you think that she's doing it just to get votes? We saw a split, 49/49. We saw a major split between men and women. Men by double digits said that they thought that she was doing it just to get votes. Women by double digits said that they thought that she was being genuine in the position she was putting forward. Clearly, there's an issue in this country of how men and women view women in leadership differently.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts, "Your exit polls don't ask where the voter got their news. Does it matter if Harris--" Sorry, let me read this right. "It doesn't matter what Harris said if they didn't hear it, if they only heard criticisms of her." I think it was different this year than other years in that respect. Certainly, we've talked a lot about social media and influencers and the decline of people following what we might call traditional, normal news organizations at all.

Domenico Montanaro: Yes, I think that this is the biggest problem in this country right now is the à la carte consumption of news media. It's gotten more specific since 2016. The rise of podcasts has been a huge one that, in 2016, I remember someone asking me, "What podcasts do you listen to?" I frankly didn't listen to very many. There weren't very many out there. There were some, but not this plethora of them that exist now where, basically, anything you believe, there's a podcast or a link to tell you that you're right.

This confirmation bias is a real issue. You can't really bridge divides if you can't agree on the facts and then be able to be open to changing your mind. I think that that's a huge issue. No doubt about it. I think that, especially for young men, there's a lot of these podcasts where they think that they're being discriminated against or there's a problem in society where it's being taken out on young men.

There were a lot of podcasts for these guys to listen to. That really made them feel that Trump was more on their side, whether it was just a tough guy, strong man image like we heard from some young men and from some Latino men about him being strong. They liked that he seemed strong. You had people with millions of followers who are now telling them that they were right on this.

I just remember having a conversation with one young guy. We were talking about expertise and how the experts, he was saying, were overrated and they don't know anything and they've gotten us in the wrong place before anyway. Just this pablum that you hear repeatedly. I was asking what he listened to and he told me. I said, "Well, that person doesn't really have any real expertise on this." He said, "Well, he's got 1.2 million followers, so he's doing something right." I think that's where we're at.

It's a little bit of a sad state on things because, as journalists, you know, it's our job to try and figure out who the best experts are to be able to give you good information, to be a little bit of a filter on just all of the noise that comes in. It's hard when people, number one, don't believe the media anymore because they've been undermined in a lot of ways by a lot of public officials, including Trump. That serves their own political interests. Largely, people are getting a lot of this information if they want it completely unfiltered.

Brian Lehrer: Diana in the East Village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Diana.

Diana: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Hi there. We got you.

Diana: Oh okay, I wasn't sure if you could hear me. I'm wondering a few things. One is regarding the environment, which is if we don't have that, we have nothing. You don't even mention that as an issue that mattered to voters. It feels as though the Republican states, even more than Democratic states, have been having horrible environmental catastrophes and disasters. I'm wondering about that. I'm also wondering about young people in gun control.

Children and people who are now 18 years old, they have had active shooter drills since they were children. I'm wondering about that. The last thing I'm wondering about is Elon Musk has been accused and, I think, charged with environmental dumping SpaceX waste into waterways throughout in his area near Texas, which is destroying the environment, which makes people sick, which kills all of the animals, which disrupts all the environment. I'm wondering about all that.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, Diana, thank you. It seems like the way they asked it, what's your top issue? Whether or not it was an open-ended question or whether they gave them the categories of economy, democracy, immigration, abortion, climate, or guns didn't make the top-top, that doesn't mean people aren't concerned. I saw another survey that I don't think was an exit poll.

Domenico, maybe you saw it or maybe there was a different exit poll that did include it that voters are still very concerned about climate change and support action to reduce climate change. On the other side of that, depending on how you frame the issue, some of those economy voters were ones who didn't want as much done about climate, I think, or they would say their number one issue was the availability of energy and the price of energy, which is anti-climate even if they wouldn't say they're anti-climate. How do you see that from what you know?

Domenico Montanaro: I think there are a lot of things that people are concerned about at once. I think that the caller raises some important issues obviously. I'm a parent. I understand the difference between what I was doing in school versus what my 15 and 12-year-old are doing in school as far as active shooter drills. I never did those, ducked under tables for nuclear fallout drills, which was also scary, but certainly very different.

Unfortunately though when the caller mentions that, for other voters, they didn't register as the top issues, the most motivating issues. When we're talking about guns or climate change, there are certainly major issues, but they weren't registering in this election as the top issues. Even among younger voters when we asked them, prices and affordability of housing continued to be the two things that voters 18 to 29 continued to say were more important to their vote than climate and guns.

Brian Lehrer: One more call and then we'll touch briefly before you go on some of the other news from over the weekend. Paul in Washington Heights, you're on WNYC with NPR senior political correspondent and editor Domenico Montanaro. Hi, Paul.

Paul: Oh, hello, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I've been trying to figure out the results of this election ever since the results came in. I'm just so perplexed by it, but there was a comment on Marketplace. I don't remember the name of the commentator, but what she said was that many of Trump's voters chose hope over details. I wonder what Domenico thinks about that observation.

Domenico Montanaro: Well, I think that if it's hope for some voters who want that type of thing, I think it's more about gut versus head maybe. It's a feeling. A lot of times, not everybody gives as much thought to elections as a lot of the people who follow the news closely, whether that's journalists or even people who just like to follow the news and are politically engaged. Most people go based on a feeling. They feel the country's off on the wrong track. They don't like how somebody looks. They don't like how they come across.

They don't like their tone of voice. They do like how this person makes them feel. "Do I feel like this person is fighting for me and my beliefs and my values?" I think that that's more what you see in elections more than people studying the issues more deeply at all. Policy matters to the point where you want to line up with somebody who mostly agrees with your worldview. Beyond that, it doesn't really get much, much deeper than that for most people.

Brian Lehrer: On the news of the day, Joe Biden pardoning Hunter Biden just before Hunter's likely prison sentencing or his sentencing, which was scheduled for next week and considered likely to result in probably a couple of years in prison on gun and tax charges. Trump is already using this as a rationale for getting ready to pardon a lot of January 6th convicted criminals. Did President Biden rank family loyalty more than the impression he might be leaving that both parties politicized the justice system?

Domenico Montanaro: I think that for President Biden, this was a personal decision. He wasn't the person on the ballot in this election. Kamala Harris lost. He's leaving office over 80 years old. The one soft spot, the one vulnerability Joe Biden has always had is for family. Even though he said repeatedly, he would not pardon his son, this is something that I think a lot of us thought, "Well, If Democrats lose, I could see Biden doing that."

I think that that's because, at the end of the day, the reality is he doesn't want his son to go to jail. I think that's really what it came down to for him. I think that he's felt really put under by the Democratic Party in a lot of ways. It was a personal, some Democrats would say, short-sighted decision because he wasn't looking out for the greater good of the party and being able to keep a high ground to say, number one, you're going to stand by your word and, number two, that you have the ethical high ground to not pardon somebody with close ties.

Of course, Trump has done this. He pardoned Jared Kushner's dad, Charles Kushner, for witness intimidation. He was just named over the weekend as ambassador to France. The point is for Democrats, who are looking out for the party, not to say, "Hey, they do it too." It's to say that they have the moral high ground, but we've seen character issues not necessarily move votes certainly in this election.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, does Charles Kushner speak French? Do you have to speak the language of the country that you're being appointed ambassador to in order to get that appointment generally?

Domenico Montanaro: I was going to look that up before I came on. I forgot to do that.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs]

Domenico Montanaro: I don't know if he speaks French, number one. Number two, you don't have to speak the language. Number three, I used to do these stories on ambassadorships. I spoke to a long-time veteran British ambassador because the Brits send really their best career people to the United States because it's so important, the relationship between other countries in the United States as opposed to the United States necessarily in other countries because of the power that the US wields.

What he said to me was, in dealing with these people who are close to a president who, normally, people who donate a lot of money to these plum ambassadorships, you look at any of the ambassadors to the UK, to Paris, to any of the US allies. Really, you wind up with people who are big donors. Germany, for example. Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, was an Obama donor who then became ambassador to Germany and was a rich guy, who now is governor of New Jersey.

What he said to me, this ambassador, was that it's actually not so bad to have somebody who you know that the president is close to and has the ear of because, a lot of times, the people who are career foreign service officers are people who are maybe good at their job at diplomacy but not necessarily somebody who you know has the president's ear. That's one argument actually for putting them in place, which I thought was interesting and surprising, but also a very diplomatic answer from somebody with a career in diplomacy.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Well, I guess a diplomat, if they're not good at diplomacy, then they better find another line of work. Domenico Montanaro, senior political correspondent and editor for NPR, thank you so much for starting us off after Thanksgiving.

Domenico Montanaro: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

 

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