Leland Vittert’s War Notes: $7 Butter

NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight’s 7 p.m. ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.  

 Much like when former President George H.W. Bush discovered supermarket barcode scanners (which turned out to be fake news), this morning, Joe Scarborough discovered $7 butter.

• No, seriously. But unlike Bush, this time it’s on tape — take a second and watch.
  • Hard knocks: Living between Jupiter, Florida, and the swanky Connecticut suburbs makes it awfully difficult to connect with us normal folks. 
• carborough: “What’s that? Butter is $7? What? Is it framed in gold?”

Welcome to our world, Joe. 

• If married women cared as much about abortion as they do about the cost of butter, Kamala Harris would be the next president. 

The $7 dollar butter revelation explains so much of the election. 

• Paycheck-to-paycheck voters — as explained last night by Frank Luntz.
• Much to the surprise of MSNBC, married women did not overwhelmingly break for Harris.
• Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, George Clooney and Beyonce couldn’t save Harris.

Paycheck-to-Paycheck Voters

The economic pain of inflation over the past three years exploded the number of “paycheck to paycheck” voters.

• The pain broke through previous political fault lines on race, sex, education and class:
  • In the end, those voters broke for Donald Trump.
    • Red shifts from 2020 to 2024 in major blue states:
      • California +12%
      • New York +11.6%
      • New Jersey +10.9%
      • Maryland +10.4%
      • Florida +9.7%
      • Massachusetts +8.8%
      • Illinois +8.6%
    • Our buddy Chris Cillizza breaks some of those numbers down here. 

THUS: You can’t say that Trump only exists because of aggrieved white men anymore.

• Telling everyone that Trump is a Hitler-like dictator didn’t work.
• Trump’s supporters aren’t just a bunch of Proud Boys. 

So what? Democrats now face an existential crisis. 

• If being against Trump isn’t enough, what are they for?
  • “Hard work is joyful work”: What does that mean?
  • Harris said she would “not concede the fight that fueled this campaign—the fight: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people.”
    • Fact check: The fight that fueled the campaign was a hatred of Donald Trump.
    • Her speeches didn’t focus on paycheck-to-paycheck voters. 

All you’re saying is that you’re going to fight against Donald Trump … that clearly isn’t enough for voters. 

For something: Working-class voters don’t care about lofty intersectional goals — they are insulted by them. 

• Just ask Batya Ungar-Sargon: “The reason why Trump won and the reason why Harris lost are one and the same. There is a winning formula with working-class Americans: strong on borders, socially moderate, trade that favors American workers and no more wars. This used to be the Democrats’ agenda. Now it’s Trump’s.”
  • Her book “Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women” is rightfully getting a lot of play.
    • Dare I say it’s the “Hillbilly Elegy” of 2024.
      • Look back: For those of you who don’t get the reference — after Trump won, the Hamptons crowd breathlessly read JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” to “explain” Trump’s 2016 win. 

“Working-Class War”: The Democratic infighting is pretty wild.

• 📝 DNC Chair Jaime Harrison roasted Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., over his comment, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”  

The future: The Democrats face an existential crisis.

• Are they the party of:
  • Kamala Harris, the California progressive who just lost the popular vote?
    • Thought bubble: Or the other California progressive, Gavin Newsom?  
  • Or Andy Beshear, the charismatic Democratic governor who won Kentucky just one year before Trump won the state by 26 points?
  • Or Josh Shapiro, the popular Jewish governor of Pennsylvania?

Burning off steam: To be fair, the response might just be burning off steam 

• “What will the future hold now that America has just decided that we’re going to f— around and find out?” said Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC
• “What we do know is that we are going to be governed by a monstrous child surrounded by cowards and grifters?” asked Stephen Colbert.
• But ever the intellectual — credit where credit is due, I watch her most nights — Rachel Maddow made a different argument:
  • 🎤 “We are the only 248-year-old multiracial, pluralistic democracy in the world. And shall we keep it? A lot of our fellow Americans say we shouldn’t. Now we know. Now we know for sure. But a lot of Americans, tens of millions of Americans, say we should keep that system, which means time to fight for it.”
• To be more fair: It’s always easier to look outward for problems rather than looking in. 

But Democrats, other than Bernie Sanders, appear to have learned nothing from this election.

• They mistake simply being an alternative to Trump as a winning strategy.
  • Many paycheck-to-paycheck voters went for Trump in spite of his personality, not because of it. 
• Another view — and this will get me in deep trouble with some of you — Trump had created an economy so good in 2020 that working-class voters could afford to be against Trump then. 

Perhaps the best “resistance” isn’t defying Trump but regaining the high ground on the issues that got him elected.

Tune into “On Balance with Leland Vittert” weeknights at 7/6C on NewsNation. Find your channel here. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.