What ‘Never Trumper’ Sarah Longwell Learned From Voters

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Mina Kim (2:04)

Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Sarah Longwell says in a democracy, what voters believe is the whole ball game, whether you agree with them or not, because what they believe dictates how they will vote and how they vote determines who governs.

That's why Longwell, a former Republican strategist and founder and publisher of The Bulwark, has been listening to thousands of voters in focus groups for years. And here's what some Trump and swing voters told her this summer.

SPEAKER_6 (2:32)

I voted for President Trump and I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things, but the communication has been beyond poor. It's been outright antagonistic at times. It's caused so much division in the country, it's ridiculous, and it doesn't even have to be there.

SPEAKER_7 (2:47)

I think that he sold us a bag of, I'm not gonna curse, but you know, I do not like the way things are going, even with ICE. And border control for me was a very big thing, as well as one of my biggest concerns with this election was cleaning up the country and getting these, you know, dangerous illegals out. But I don't like how innocent people, professionals have been incarcerated or taken.

SPEAKER_8 (3:18)

I've never paid $9 for ground beef before, ever, you know, like even the good kind. So that is really, really crazy and getting very scary.

And it's just like, I really thought that it was gonna be about us here at home. He made me feel like he empathized with the plight of what was going on with Americans and, you know, middle class and like below. But it just kind of feels like it's been involved in other countries and big corporations and all that since the beginning and not really focusing on us here at home and like real everyday issues.

Mina Kim (4:01)

Longwell has taken what she's heard from voters and come up with a playbook to persuade enough of them to vote Democrat and defeat MAGA and authoritarian populism. It's called How to Eat an Elephant, One Voter at a Time. And Sarah joins me now.

Welcome to Forum, Sarah.

Sarah Longwell (4:18)

Oh, thanks so much for having me.

Mina Kim (4:20)

See, just to be clear, you are not exactly a Democrat. And in fact, you were a Republican political operative for a long time.

Sarah Longwell (4:27)

Yeah, I was a Republican for most of my career until Trump came along. And then I've subsequently basically committed myself to trying to defeat Republicans in every election since.

But I do just sort of consider myself an American. I know that that might sound a little bit cheesy. But if you think about it for a second, the extent to which we sort of polarize ourselves and demand that we have a team, I don't always think is the healthiest. And the reason, like the thing that animates me to do this work and to defeat Trump and the MAGA movement is rooted in a lot of sort of core American values and the damage that he is doing to it. And so for me, it's not about finding another partisan home. It is about finding a pro-democracy coalition that I can be a part of to defeat what I think is one of the most dangerous things I've seen in American politics in my life.