While trying to find a reason behind more voters turning to former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-hosts pointed to identity and cultural politics based on their own experiences.
Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist both recounted what they saw and heard in the lead-up to the election that saw Trump reelected — backlash against the Democratic focus on trans identity and the Israel-Hamas War. As Mika Brzezinski read an excerpt from Matt Bai’s analysis in The Washington Post, Geist and Scarborough offered up real-life examples of Bai’s observations.
Geist recounted a local race where he lives, which he described as a “rural” area outside the city:
I live in a relatively rural area outside the city. There was a local race there, and the Republican changed her signs picking up on this. And every sign said “Save Girls Sports.” It was just her name for a long time. And she said, if you read and talk to people around the campaign, she couldn’t print enough of those signs. People were driving by saying, “I want one of those for my yard.” When it was just her name, they said, “Oh, it’s another candidate. I don’t even know who she is or what she’s running for.” “Save Girls Sports,” and they were all over the place.
Brzezinski read the following passage from the Bai piece:
I do think the prosecutions fed a narrative of Trump as a victim. I also think Democrats dug themselves into a hole on cultural issues and identity politics. Trump’s vicious transgender ad in the closing weeks [“She’s for they/them, he’s for you”] was probably the most effective of the cycle. I think that probably landed with a lot of traditionally Democratic voters who feel like the party is consumed with the cultural issues while the economic issues don’t really change. I think people needed a reason to feel good and hopeful about voting for her. And absent that, a lot of frustrated voters apparently decided to go with the guy who wants to burn it all down.