It’s been a week. To help us through it, we’ve enlisted The New York Times political reporter Astead Herndon.

We start with election night 2024 versus election night 2016 (6:35 ), what Astead discovered about the electorate reporting across the U.S. on his podcast The Run-Up (9:25 ), and how insider Democrats arrived at a second Biden run in 2023 (13:30 ). Then, we discuss politicians’ “lowercase racist” assumptions about Black and Latino voters (16:02 ), Herndon’s telling one on one interview with Vice President Harris (22:52 ), and the pervasive, nationwide sentiments that led to Donald Trump’s re-election (32:24 ).

On the back-half: where the Harris campaign fell short in its messaging to voters (38:48 ), the rise of the “podcast election” (44:48 ), a revealing window into the Biden administration (47:35 ), how quickly “good intentions” can turn power corrupted (53:01 ), and why the Democratic party must remake itself (1:00:55 ) as we begin to move forward from this election (1:06:00 ).

Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at sf@talkeasypod.com.

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