Funding for “To the Contrary,” provided by: This week, on “To the Contrary,” analyzing the trends amongst diverse demographics that led to Donald Trump's victory and future of women's rights under Trump.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to “To the Contrary,” a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Up first, the impact of Donald Trump's victory.

Donald Trump will be heading back to the White House after improving in many key demographics compared to his loss in 2020.

Kamala Harris, despite her campaign's emphasis on issues, such as reproductive rights, didn't quite garner support from among female voters as much as anticipated.

She managed to secure the majority of women's votes, but not with the landslide some had predicted.

Harris also did well among Black men, but lost some ground relative to her expectations.

Meanwhile, Trump saw an unexpected surge in support from Latino men, despite losing the Hispanic vote overall to Harris.

Overall, Trump managed to gain in most key demographics, ensuring a Republican victory.

Joining me on the panel this week are former Democratic Congressmember Donna Edwards, Democrat of Maryland, Republican strategist Ann Stone, Sam Bennett of the New York Amsterdam News, and Linda Chavez of the Center for Equal Opportunity.

So, Donna Edwards, why did women not turn out for Harris, as some expected, especially white women without college degrees?

Well, I mean, I think that that is the million dollar question.

We've had two elections, where women, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris and the numbers are basically exactly the same of white women, non-college-educated white women.

And this has been standard for Democrats for many elections and particularly for women candidates.

And so I don't think it really, you know, until we figure that out, I think it will be really difficult to elect a woman as president.

So figure it out.

How would it be figured out?

Well, I mean, we have to understand better what is motivating this set of women, what it is about, you know, voting for woman at the top of the ticket seems to be a barrier.

And I just I think that we don't understand enough about the motivations of this segment of women to understand what is going to put them over the top.

And until we do that, it is hard to see how we get to a point where we have a woman president because men, you know, men are not there.

Especially white men are not there, college educated and non-college educated and in majorities.

And it's going to depend on white women without college.

I mean, short of making sure that every woman out there has a college degree.

We need to understand more what is motivating this set of women.

And I don't think we've asked the questions to do that.

And until we do, this may be a lost cause.

Did she lose because she was a woman of color?

You know, I think there's a tendency to do this postmortem within a couple of days of an election.

And I just, I don't think that the early exit polls are telling us that.

I am curious, for example, the fact that she lost 50 whatever, she lost 55% of Latino men is concerning.

I want to dig under that.

I want to make sure we understand whether people were really concerned about inflation or whether they were using inflation to hide their sexism and their racism.

I don't think we know the answers to those questions yet.

Well, I know a good deal about Hispanic voters.

I've been studying and writing about them for almost 40 years, and in 1991, published a book which predicted that Hispanics were trending Republican and that at some point they were going to go the way of Italians, and were going to become a majority Republican.

This is not new.

We saw Republican votes, from Hispanics, in 1972 with Richard Nixon.

We saw in 1984 with Reagan.

We saw it in 2004 with George W. Bush.

But Obama was able to.

Yes, he was to.

To increase the number of Hispanics.

Correct.

Who voted Democrat.

But, you know, I, I wanted to go back to the question about women.

I think that when you go to the grocery store today, eggs cost about $3 a dozen.

In 2009, they were $2.36 a dozen.

If you want to know why, Biden did not, I shouldn't say Biden.

Harris did not do as well with working class voters, I think it's all about the pain they feel in their pocketbooks.

That was it, I mean, she took the words right out of my mouth.

I'd say.

I advised my Republican friends, if you want people to vote for Trump, send them to the grocery store before they go in to the polls.

I'm shocked every time I go in.

Ground beef, $7, $9 a pound.

You've got to be kidding.

We're not talking about, you know, steak.

Don't even talk about steak because that's like $20 for a steak that used to cost $10.

It's insane.

So that, I think, Donna, you find out it wasn't her gender, it wasn't her race, it was prices was a big part of what drove them.

Also security.

Well, what do you think, what do you think Donald Trump's going to be able to do about that?

I'll tell you that in a minute.

But let me tell you what other thing, just to give Donna some advice.

What we found in 1984, when they thought there was going to be huge gender gap with Reagan and there ended up not being.

I predicted back then as well, women come back to the Republican fold on issues of security, not only crime, but national security.

They don't want their children going to war.

So that's another reason that they came back and supported Donald Trump.

How is Trump going to fix inflation?

First thing, lower energy costs by expanding drilling and assuring the energy companies that they are going to have a clear future with him.

Second, going to those that are currently buying oil from our enemies and say you do it, you buy from us or you know, you can't do business with the U.S.

So he'll drive more business to our people.

That wil also help lower energy prices.

The other is roll back the 2 trillion in regulations that are affecting business right now.

That, too, is going to help bring down a whole host of costs that will come back and affect the bottom line of the final product.

So there's a lot of things he can do.

Okay.

But he's not.

What about the environmental impact of that?

Of which, of drilling?

No, releasing regulations of increasing drilling, all the pollution.

Sure.

That contributes to CO2?

Sure.

All that sort of stuff that's going to make life miserable for your guys children and grandchildren.

The oil is going to be drilled somewhere, if not by us, by others.

You want us doing it, not the others.

We have the cleanest record.

So if there's going to be attractions made, you want the United States doing it.

And under Trump, a little known.

I mean, our air and water did get better.

He's not a radical when it comes to environment.

He will be fine.

And they'll be careful about the regulations as they roll them back.

But there's a lot of that have nothing to do with environmental that are hurting business right now.

I'm just curious why you say he's not a radical.

He rolled back just about every environmental law that President Obama set forth.

He does believe in clean water and clean air.

So he will always keep that in mind.

Three quick things.

Number one, every economist in the world agrees the president has no impact on inflation.

It's other trends that affect that.

Number two, I happen to be, as I share with my colleagues earlier, the GOtv chair get out the vote chair for 20 years in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that for many years had the fastest growing Latino community in the country.

And as Linda pointed out, I think it's complacency that Latinos will automatically vote Democratic.

That's the problem.

They need to be persuaded.

And we had great success in Allentown, actually, our Latino community, predominantly Puerto Rican, consistently voted heavily Democratic.

But it takes education.

And connecting the dots.

And the second point, the third point, excuse me, on women and non-college educated women, it's the same story.

We in America struggle with an overall complacency about the state of women's rights in this nation.

And so if you are a non-college educated woman, perhaps you're more out of touch, possibly with the true state.

Right now, we're ranked 75th in the world in the number of women in elected office.

We are tied with Iraq.

We have a very low rate of women's quality of life relative to other rich nations.

That message hasn't been driven home.

And I think until we drive that message home, which is hard to do per Donna's point.

We are going to see these kinds of results.

The good news is it's all doable.

The Democratic Party clearly has a mandate, a chart set forward based on these results and others.

Kamala Harris could not have run a better campaign in three months.

All hats off to her.

Back to you, Donna.

What does the Democratic Party need to do to reorganize, to make a credible run for president next in four years?

We have to really analyze what happened, because I think it's easy to kind of jump to conclusions about what X demographic group is doing and what trends are, and then make a mistake in terms of what you do to reach those groups.

And I have to say, we spend a lot of time talking about things like student loan forgiveness.

I really believe in student loan forgiveness.

I came out of school with $100,000 in loans.

Believe me, I know.

At the same time, that is something that doesn't speak to so many Americans who aren't paying student loans, are getting up every day, and they're going to work at a minimum wage or just above minimum wage jobs, and they're struggling to take care of their families.

And so we have to have policies that don't just sort of say, here's what we're going to do for your future.

And over the next 10 years, people want to understand, in plain language, what's going to happen today to improve the lives of themselves and their families and the prospects of their children.

And I do think this was part of Trump's attractiveness.

It's a very plain, I mean, I didn't like the language, but it was really plain spoken.

And I think sometimes it's important for us to talk to voters like we're voters, peers and not their superiors.

Now, now, I must ask, immigration is obviously a very problematic issue for Democrats.

What should, I mean, it could be said, aside from race and gender, that that may have been, that and the economy, were the biggest reasons that people voted for Trump instead of for her.

The party always was supporting, letting a lot of immigrants, you know, large numbers of immigrants into the country, who they assumed would vote Democratic and now they're not.

So what does that do to Democratic policy on immigration?

This, again, is another area I've been studying for so many years.

I do think immigration was a big issue.

And I think people's concern about what they perceived as an uncontrolled border was major.

And I think, even Biden had to recognize that, he changed his policies.

I think it was difficult for Kamala Harris to be able to persuade people if Biden could change the policies in this last year, why didn't he change them four years ago?

I am, as you know, a huge advocate of large-scale legal immigration to the United States.

But I will tell you this that having looked at the data from previous waves of immigrants, whether they were coming from Germany and Ireland of the mid-19th century or from south, Southern and Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, there does seem to be a tipping point when you get to about 13-14% of the population being foreign born.

That's when you see the pushback.

That's when you start to see people saying, “No más, no more.” Linda, let me just because I want, there are immigrants who don't want any more immigrants.

Absolutely.

They're immigrants who are saying, “They're running my pay down, stop.” Right.

And that's already there.

Immigrants who are saying, you know, there's too much competition.

The class should be closed.

Yes.

And that's exactly right.

And I think, you know, and again, I've long advocated for more skills- based immigrants.

That doesn't mean only people with, you know, PhDs in computer science.

It does mean that we have many jobs in the United States that go unfilled if it fills them.

Medical jobs.

Yeah, medical jobs.

But, you know, I want to swing back to something Ann said.

Ann, you asked about inflation, the one thing that Trump could do that would drive inflation through the roof is start deporting people.

You take a million, 2 million, 3 million people out of the labor force and you're going to have a catastrophe economically.

Definitely.

I mean, what would employers do?

And I would imagine for workers to that employers would go to him, major employers and say.

They would ship jobs overseas.

You know, we can, I was on the board of the largest chicken company at the time, in 2008, when you can't get workers in the United States, you moved the plant to Mexico and you get Mexicans here or you get them in Mexico, and communities would probably rather have them here so that those people are helping the community by paying taxes and buying houses and cars.

If we took those jobs, if we deported people, the strong economic evidence, that would be disastrous for our economy.

And in fact, immigrants are the engine of the American economy.

Every illegal immigrant that's here immediately spends their money and fuels the economy immediately.

So it's a very important driver to our economy.

I think what's missing, though, right?

Number one, is the assumption they'll vote Democratic, right?

That is that is a, you know, that's not correct.

We have to educate people in a way and speak to them, to Donna's point, speak to them in ways that resonate.

And there are plenty of areas where we've had strong success in getting that message across, right, that to vote in their own best interests.

But to your point, Bonnie, we saw that pattern, particularly among Latino men.

And remember, this was such a close race.

We all knew it was going to be close.

So there's.

Well, it didnt end up close.

She was clobbered.

Well, but I just want to make a point, we knew it was going to be close And so what happened is you had a number of segments like Latino men, like women, non-college educated women.

You had sort of a perfect storm of slices of the electorate going for Trump, almost all of them.

And I think that was the net effect in this election.

But to your point about it becoming a voting issue for three years, they told us there was no problem.

And only if you watch Fox News, you know there was a problem because there was one reporter at the border and it was a Fox guy.

Nobody else was there.

They kept deny, deny, deny, deny.

And the people down there knew.

It became a voting issue when Abbott and DeSantis started sending migrants into northern cities.

And all of a sudden they recognize it's everybody's problem.

That alone turned it into a voting issue.

That's why Donald Trump increased his vote by 30% in New York City, which is just insane.

Well, you ask what the president will will do on inflation.

And the reality is that two of the biggest proposals that he has, both deportation and tariffs, are going to send the price of eggs and milk and bread through the roof.

On deportation, they're going to start with the criminals, how far they go beyond that, we'll see.

If it starts to tighten the labor market too much, he'll open the doors and bring in more legals.

Ann, you are tracking the specious argument about Haitians eating dogs and cats.

We can't.

I didn't raise that.

You just raise that.

What I'm saying is, you start with the criminals, then beyond that, you start going backwards.

People who are first in, first out kind of thing.

When you get to people who have been here and have long histories, there might be some accommodation that can be negotiated.

At that point, we don't know.

We'll see.

Let's get there first.

But if the labor market tightens, we'll just open the doors more.

And he's promising to get rid of 20.

He's promising to get rid of 20 million people.

First of all, there aren't 20 million undocumented people, theres more about 12, 12.5.

In an election, of course, in a fight, in an election, numbers are tossed out by both sides.

It may tend not to be correct in the end.

So we'll deal with that when it comes.

When we start seeing the police or the National Guard or whoever it is showing up at people's houses, knocking on doors, breaking in, hauling out a bunch of, you know, a whole family.

How's the public going to react to that?

I don't know, how did they react when several Trump associates had that happen or when the Catholics had that happen or when the poor guy who had the squirrel and the raccoon had that happen?

There's been a lot of that going on, Bonnie.

Ann, that's completely.

What we talking about is the National Guard being catalyzed to violate basic civil rights?

I think you, I think that that is disinformation.

You guys are fearmongering.

Let see what job Stephen Miller gets.

That could be a problem, Linda.

You're right.

You're right on that.

The reelection of Donald Trump alongside a Republican- controlled Senate, and potentially the House, could herald significant changes for women's issues.

Abortion rights might face further restrictions with the possibility of legislative moves to limit access or challenge state-level protections, especially given the conservative shift in the Supreme Court.

Equal pay initiatives might struggle to gain traction with fewer Democrats in power.

Women's health care from maternity services to preventive care under the Affordable Care Act, could see changes or reductions in coverage.

Trump, for his part, has vowed to protect women, whether they like it or not.

What does that mean?

Ann Stone and I know for the longest time, anyway, when he was, you were saying that he would not ban abortion.

Are they going to pass a federal ban on abortion?

He would veto it because essentially, in his heart, he's pro-choice.

He is pro-life from a standpoint of he preferred the women not choose it, but he does want women to have the choice.

Please don't start laughing.

Donna and Sam We rewrote the Republican platform on abortion.

We, I have worked for, you know, 35 years to try to get that thing changed.

We rewrote it.

It is a basically a pro-choice platform on abortion.

It reaffirms access to contraception and IVF and says, we're only, you know, only going to push against abortion in third trimester with exceptions.

And other than that, you know, it's bad to the states.

Yeah.

But what is the, what does it matter what the platform says?

I'm just saying.

That's his signal of what he will do.

Okay.

And he said he wonnt send a national ban and he won't.

I have worked for about 30 years to try to create a common ground movement in our party.

And I finally, just before the election, about six months before we finally got the party, to start talking about it and looking at conducting common ground meetings in states where there are these problems, where they can come up with a better way of addressing abortion that does not take women's rights away.

I'm going to continue to fight for that, because I think that is the way forward on this issue.

Thats the way forward on immigration.

Let me get Donna.

Let me get Donna in here, please.

On what about things like equal pay?

Is that dead for women under Trump?

You know, all these things that are identified as a Democratic agenda are dead in a Congress that is dominated by Republicans in the House and the Senate and, of course, with control of the White House.

I think my worry is more things like what's going to happen at HHS and what are the appointments at FDA, and how is that going to, you know, impact the ability to get medications on the market?

I worry in the Senate that there is enough of a majority, obviously, with control that if President Trump's nominations to courts at every single level will get in the way of some of these things that are coming through the, through the state, certainly, potentially additional appointments if there are retirements in the Supreme Court.

And Justice Justice Sotomayor is not well and Justice Thomas would probably retire or it's said among people who cover the Supreme Court that they expect he might retire if he knows it's safe.

And that, for his side.

And Alito.

And Alito could be.

There could be 2 to 3 appointments that could move through.

And that would have a devastating impact on women's lives.

Devastating on civil rights.

I mean, there are whole, on the environment.

There are a whole slew of policy issues that are going to make their way through the through the courts that will be stymied by these appointments.

And we're talking about a two generational change in the courts, you know, appointing younger judges and justices that will be on the bench for the next 40 years, you know, to the time where our grandchildren become adults.

I'll be honest right now on this topic, I'm having a hard time maintaining my composure.

I'm actually crying over here.

I think this is devastating for women.

There's no way around it.

We have a man in public office who received the popular vote, who is found in the courts to be a rapist, who speaks in horrible terms about women.

That's the leader of our nation, let alone a Senate controlled by his party, let alone a Congress.

We'll see what's happened.

So I think we cannot, we cannot be complacent about this at all.

This is a time for women to have their eyes wide open about what is about to transpire At the Amsterdam News, of course, where I work as president.

Honored to be there.

The Black voters overwhelmingly went with Harris and on the cover of the paper, on Thursday, today, it says, “American carnage, but we will continue the fight.” The Black community sees this as a massive setback for their civil rights.

The women's community sees this as a massive setback for their rights.

So we have to go into this steeling ourselves for what is about to happen.

Well, on the abortion issue, Ann has in fact been very pro-choice for as long as I've known her.

Donald Trump goes both ways.

You know, he told Chris Matthews, that he thought women should be punished, that there had to be punishment for abortion.

So people need to remember that.

On the question of the Supreme Court, if Sotomayor steps down, I expect Eileen Ken to be the second Latina appointed to the United States Supreme Court.

That's it for this edition of “To the contrary.” Keep the conversation going on our social media platforms.

Reach out to us @tothecontrary and visit our website, the address on the screen and whether you agree or think to the contrary, see you next time.

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