Weekly Roundup: A Historic Election, the Religious Left's Huge Impact, and the Religious Right Remains the Religious White
As we process the unfolding events related to the election, Brad and Dan discuss:
why Tuesday night felt so dismaying, despite knowing it would be a long road
the disappointing turnout for Trumpism and the need to reckon with Whiteness
the myriad of reasons to be not only relieved, but hopeful
Madison Cawthorn = future of the Religious Right
Stacey Abrams, Raphael Warnock, Cori Bush, and the Squad = Vanguards of the Religious Left
Why Christian nationalism is far from defeated
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
To Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hello, my name is Brad Onishi, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Skidmore College, This is Straight White American Jesus, produced in partnership with the Kapp Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and I'm here with my co-host today,
I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
Brad, I feel like, I don't know, has anything worth talking about happened this week?
Are we both a little punchy because it's been sleepless nights and anxiety and things like that?
Yeah, you know, we're supposed to have election night.
Thanks to 2020, we now have a new invention, which is election night season.
Yeah, it's a whole season.
It was very on brand for 2020, I have to say, right?
Like, you know, there's not there's not even like pandemic season at this point.
We're coming up on like pandemic year, you know.
So yeah, so it's just it's just 2020 being 2020.
I think that's right.
Okay, so Couple of things.
Friends, a lot of you have been, you know, getting at me this week and saying, I can't wait to hear what you guys are going to talk about.
And I just want to say up front, there's so much here.
So many emotions, so many issues, so many events.
So we're not going to be able to talk about all of it.
Things are happening in real time.
It's Friday, midday on the East Coast, and we have a clearer picture now of what's going to happen.
Things are still moving.
So we're gonna get to all of that.
We're gonna talk about a bunch of stories that are directly related to both the religious left and the religious right.
And yet, Dan, I just I want to start with you and me just sort of sharing, you know, I think how we felt throughout the week is maybe how a lot of people felt throughout the week.
So I'll ask you this first.
How did you feel Tuesday night?
Why did Tuesday night feel so bad?
Why did Tuesday night feel disappointing?
And then we'll get through, you know, we'll get through the week here on to Wednesday, Thursday, now Friday.
But why did that initial night just, do you think, feel disappointing?
I think a few things.
One is, and this is something I don't want to get into too much, because I think there's no point until we have like firm numbers and things like that, and exit polls this year are kind of useless, so it's going to take longer to get some of the data, but like obviously the polling projections were like worse than they were in 2016 in a lot of places, so unmet expectations.
But so I was disappointed but I knew like I knew is everybody knew and had heard that voting excuse me mail-in voting was likely to favor the Democrats so you would get the so-called red mirage or you know a blue shift or whatever you want to call that later but still to see some of the numbers like when I first saw Pennsylvania coming out with like more than half a million votes for Trump and Biden was down like was it like 12 13 points or something whatever it was it might have been more
That was sort of disheartening when I first saw the projection of the map and it looked basically like it wound up in 2016.
But part of what that brings me to is like part of what bugs me about this and we talk about why we felt the way we felt like this is part of is like on the one hand the media for you know months has said we're not going to know on election night whatever but I get really really frustrated With this media narrative that is some sort of crisis, if we don't know right away on election night, that there's something wrong, there's something scary, that Trump is going to do scary things, we have to know election night, because there's no reason that we do.
And so while the media had been saying for months, we're not going to know on Tuesday night, they still create this sense of crisis.
And so I just want to throw some things out there for people to think about, right?
That, you know, on the one hand, you had a record number of people voting this year, which is great.
According to the U.S.
Elections Project, about 66% of eligible voters voted, which is a huge number, and raw numbers more than any election in history.
So that's going to add some time in the mail-in and all of that.
But people have this notion that, like, November 3rd is the election, but it's kind of not, right?
It's the day that you cast ballots.
Now we should say it's the deadline by which you need to have cast a ballot.
What?
Right?
But states still have to certify their elections.
When does that happen?
Most of them, it's not till the last week of November, first week of December.
Like, that's when it becomes official.
I still hear NPR today saying, nothing's official yet, the AP hasn't called.
Well, guess what?
The AP doesn't call it.
Like, media networks don't call it.
It's not official until states certify the results.
And then, as more people now know than they did before, it goes to the Electoral College electors.
They don't cast ballots till December 14th.
Those are not received.
The deadline for receipt of those is the 23rd.
The counting of those within the legislature doesn't happen until January 6th, and we all know that the inauguration is not until the 20th.
My point is, no matter what happens on November 3rd, Donald Trump is president until January Like period.
And so that's one of the things I think is there is this crisis that's born both of a media ecosystem that is driven by the same things as like regular TV and entertainment, like ratings, viewers, clicks.
And so it is in their interest to create this sense of crisis.
You have a 24-hour news cycle.
So you get the echo chamber of the same thing.
So we fall in the trap that I did of sitting there on Tuesday night at like one in the morning, hitting refresh every 45 seconds, like hoping that something magical will be different or something.
Together with just, I think, a fundamental lack of civic education on the part of most Americans who think of the election the same way that they think of like picking something on Netflix.
I should have it now.
I should be able to just download it and have it and it's this kind of consumer mindset built in with ignorance.
So all of that to say I think we've all been conditioned by this.
So one reason why We felt the way we did is because despite the fact that it was unsettled, we thought it should be settled and it wasn't.
And a similar thing happened in 2018.
I'll move on or let you take up just a minute.
But in 2018, I remember, I live on the East Coast, right?
So, it gets late here before things in lots of the other parts of the country are sort of finalized.
I remember watching CNN and they were like, well, you know, the Democrats made some gains, but this sure wasn't a blue wave.
And I was like, polls in a lot of states haven't even closed yet.
Like, you know, and of course, two, three days later, it looked really different.
Guess what?
We're here on Friday, a whole three days.
After the election.
That's it.
And things look radically different.
As we're sitting here right now, Biden, it looks like, is going to win almost all of those sort of unsettled states.
Alaska, he's obviously not going to win, and probably not North Carolina, but the others are breaking his way.
All that said, I just think we've been conditioned by that, and then the media feeds it, and then Trump, of course, takes advantage of it and has been for several days now.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWADGE episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire SWADGE archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
