Meditations on a Bittersweet Election

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2020

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry joins Kai to discuss all of our complex feelings as Donald Trump’s presidency comes to an end. More people voted in this presidential election than ever. But did it resolve anything? Are we any closer to being a truly multiracial democracy? And how do we feel about the United States and our place in it -- after all that has happened? Listeners call in to answer these questions for themselves, as Kai and Melissa Harris-Perry try to take stock. Drs. Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren are the hosts of The Nation’s System Check, a new 10-episode podcast uncovering the harmful systems operating under the hood of US democracy. The United States of Anxiety airs live every Sunday evening at 6 eastern time. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. To catch all the action, stream the show on WNYC.org/anxiety or tell your smart speakers to play WNYC, each Sunday evening.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Kywright and this is the United States of anxiety, a show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future.
0:09.0	Americans are choosing their next leader, the highest voted turnout in a century.
0:13.8	We have it within us to actually transform and deliver a different kind of future for our
0:19.3	country. Whether Trump is president or not we're gonna have to reckon with Trumpism for a very long time.
0:24.7	To stop the vote suggests to stop the very democracy that we are running and these persons are running to uphold.
0:33.0	The country has been playing politics for a long time on this hatred.
0:37.0	We know things.
0:38.0	I hate that I have to say I belong.
0:40.0	Why do I have to justify that I'm American?
0:42.8	Working class people, black people, indigenous people, brown people, immigrants deserve to have their vote
0:50.8	touted. to have their votes counted. Thus far, just shy of 150 million votes have been counted.
0:55.0	That's as of now a day after every major news
1:05.4	organization concluded that Joe Biden won. That means more people voted in
1:09.5	this presidential election than ever before.
1:13.0	Joe Biden has declared victory and claimed a mandate.
1:17.0	He's got a point.
1:18.0	75 million people and counting said they want him to be president, which is, it's notable, 9 million more people than voted
1:24.8	for Barack Obama in 2008.
1:27.0	Biden's also well on his way to 300 electoral college votes.
1:30.4	So by traditional standards of electoral politics he can certainly reasonably claim a mandate
1:36.6	But of course whenever we ask this question does the winner have a quote mandate what we really mean is do we agree on the next steps?
1:45.2	Have we resolved anything?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.