It's the Brian Lera Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

And as the country anticipates a second Trump presidency with hopes, with dread, with ambivalence, depending on who you are.

One thing that happens after a big margin election like this is that the party that lost

begins a reckoning. Do you remember in 2012 after President Obama's first two years in office,

Democrats took what Obama called a shalacking in the midterm elections. Control of Congress

flipped from blue to red, and Republicans took control of around 19 state governments. I think it was

19. So a humbled Obama went before the nation and said this. A couple of great communicators

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were standing at this podium,

two years into their presidency, getting very similar questions.

Because the economy wasn't working the way it needed to be.

And there were a whole range of factors that made people concerned that maybe the party in power wasn't listening to them.

Maybe the party in power wasn't listening to them.

Obama in 2012, acknowledging that maybe he lost touch with the voters on the economy, though, as he also

pointed out, the party in power when voters are feeling economic pain often takes those kinds

of hits, regardless of party. So what kind of Democratic Party reckoning needs to start today?

When Trump came within five points in New Jersey, when he rose from

a fifth of the vote to a third of the vote in New York City, when he beat Joe Biden's 20-20 vote

among Latino men, by 34 points nationally, when he went all three blue wall states, Pennsylvania,

Wisconsin, Michigan, when Vice President Harris, despite the abortion issue

and despite the potential to become the first woman president, only got 53% of women's votes,

all these numbers according to the exit polls, what questions should Democrats be asking themselves

and with what early answers? Or, as some voters were just saying on the BBC, maybe you were listening, it was mostly

...