Brooks and Capehart on what's ahead for the country after Trump’s win

♪♪ geoff: For more on how Donald Trump's reelection, we turn to brooks and Capehart. That's new York Times columnist David brooks and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for the Washington post. Welcome back.

We have had a few days to assess the implications of Donald Trump's sweeping victory, winning the electoral college and the popular vote, a first time a Republican has done then into decades. What does his decisive victory revealed to you about this country? David: I think since 2016, we have entered a new political era.

The period between 1980 and 2016 was the information age. We decided America was moving to a postindustrial economy, led by college grads. So many of our policies were oriented favorable college grads.

Let's get everyone into four-year colleges, immigration policy, let's provide college grads with cheap labor. Trade policy. We allowed manufacturing jobs to go overseas while service jobs were not threatened.

Geographic policy, we have a laissez-faire attitude where it congregated in Washington and Boston, and we didn't worry about this places left behind. We had a policy that favored college grads, and disfavored everybody else. And basically in 2016, emphatically last Tuesday, a lot of people said, I have had enough, we need to change.

Geoff: Do you see that same realignment that the new fault line and our politics is education level? Jonathan: It's one of them. I don't disagree with anything that David just said in terms of his analysis.

But we cannot ignore what was being discussed in the last segment. The role of racism and sexism, misogyny, grievance, white nationalism, that was very much a part of Donald Trump's campaign. And I think we need to acknowledge it, we need to talk about it.

And then I think as a country, we need to confront it. We have never done it in our history. We probably won't do it now.

But I think we need to acknowledge the fact that the incoming president of the united States openly ran on racist messages about fellow citizens, noncitizens, people who have always come into this country seeking a better life, long before build the wall. We can talk about this education realignment, we can talk about political realignment. Until we talk about the grievances that Donald Trump exploited, we are going to be in this mess for a while.

Geoff: That wasn't disqualifying? David: Millions -- I personally think Donald Trump is clearly misogynist. I think he is clearly a racist.

But, to make that argument, somehow you also have to explain why the general gap went down. While Kamala Harris did worse among women than Joe Biden. You have to explain why trump got more black voters then any Republican since Richard Nixon.

Somehow you have to explain how he massively improved Republicans standing among hispanic voters. He created this broad network. The way I would explain those phenomenon is race and sex -- racism and sexism are facts of American life.

In our politics, class is rising, and race and gender are falling in salience. When you say people have to choose between their race and gender, for white women, you are ignoring that they have brains and economic views, social cues, a million other views. Those views are part of how people make their decisions, not just an ethnic identity.

Geoff: It is all part of this to. All I'm argument is don't ignore the potatoes and the carrots while focusing on the meat. David: Ok.

I am all for eating. I am on a protein diet right now. Geoff: One thing about this election that stood out to me, in state after state, you have voters that backed Donald Trump and ballot initiatives that advanced Progressive goals.

You have these laws protecting abortion rights that were backed by the majority of voters in most states. You had voters in two red states, Alaska Missouri, they approved measures to raise the minimum wage, to ensure paid sick leave, and yet those states also voted for Donald Trump. Voters clearly had in their minds a different picture of what the presidency meant.

David: This is may be the new form of ticket splitting. Before, you would vote for the president of one party and vote for the governor or senator of another party. Maybe it is breaking down along issue lines?

I don't know. Clearly, maybe those folks don't view the presidency as seriously because it feels so removed, whereas, my state is going to raise the minimum wage, I get to have a say in the? Fine, I will vote or that.

Or reproductive rights, I will vote for that. Recreational marijuana, find, I will vote for that. Jonathan: I will come back to my class analysis.

If you are working class, you might like to rub up against on some things that you also like raising the minimum wage, you like eliminating the tax on tips. The whole country is shifting to left on abortion. Left and right.

These things are not inconsistent, if you look at who is a populist. And populists, they want to funnel work -- funnel money to working-class people. It is also interesting to watch the californians vote left for president, but on the ballot initiatives, they threw out two Progressive attorney general's.

In northern California, they adopted aggressive criminal penalties against shoplifting and vagrancy. They shifted right based on the issues they are feeling at the moment. That's my basic view, which is why it is important to learn from the electorate.

It's complicated. Geoff: As Democrats second-guess what went wrong, speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi told the American times, had the president, Joe Biden, got to know sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation were if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary and Kamala would have done well in that and been stronger but we don't know that.

That didn't happen. Do you think that's right? Four there were more fundamental issues about how Democrats were perceived, that ended up being too much of an obstacle?

David: That's for me? [Laughter] Look, this is the thing Democrats do that drives me nuts. The finger-pointing in the blame gaming.

Almost immediately. Look, what happened, happened. And to go back and second-guess decisions that were made, I just don't think are helpful.

I think what would be helpful is to start thinking about how does the party recover and go about doing what David is saying, sifting through the information we got through from the voters, and plan accordingly. As despondent -- not despond and. As sad as I am about how the election went, and particularly how people voted, it is my hope that the democratic party can figure out a way to reach those voters, not just the ones who didn't vote for them, but for the folks who didn't show up at all.

The one thing that I noticed is that Donald Trump and vice president Harris got fewer votes than their counterparts in the previous election. We also should be talking about that. Why did so many people sit out?

Geoff: What are you watching for as Donald Trump puts together his team and prepares to take office again, with the experience of knowing how to use the levers of power, and potentially having a Republican senate -- he will have a Republican senate, but potentially a Republican house? Jonathan: I'm looking to see how organized he is. In the first term, there was no policy process.

He passed some things but it was all policy chaos. Is it going to be like that again? Will Republicans -- I'm interested in nato and you rain.

Will he have a sensible foreign policy team, of course they will not want to spend as much as the Democrats are spending, but they need to put pressure on Putin. And tariffs. Donald Trump was helped because there was inflation.

If he imposes 20% tariffs, we will have a lot of inflation. Are they going to walk into that eyes open? I don't know.

Geoff: Same question. Jonathan: You might be more organized this time. The one thing I'm watching for and worry about is whether the Republican majority, let's just assuming they also get the house , overreach?

If anything, they are always guilty of overreaching. It is just a matter of at what point will the American people say, you know what, you have gone too far, and maybe his comments today about beginning mass deportations immediately because we must do this, maybe that will be the first sign of overreach. >> By July 1 he will overreach.

Geoff: David brooks and Jonathan, thank you to you both.