Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and author, discusses how Democrats can defeat Donald Trump with Yascha Mounk in this conversation. According to Longwell, Trump's dominance stems from his unique relationship with the American public, spanning decades through various media platforms and business ventures. Longwell argues that running a celebrity like Brad Pitt or Trump would not be effective, as they need to have a genuine public persona. In her view, part of the Democratic Party's problem is that voters didn't know Kamala Harris well enough, highlighting the importance of having a strong public image.
Written by the local model on 2026-09-08,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
Sarah Longwell is publisher of The Bulwark, host of The Focus Group podcast, and author of How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time.
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Longwell → eat → Time
In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Sarah Longwell discuss why Donald Trump has dominated American politics for a decade, where Kamala Harris went wrong, and how the Democratic Party can win back working-class voters.
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Party → discuss → voters
This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
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transcript → condense → clarity
I’m really excited to talk about the book—and how on earth we can defeat Donald Trump and the broader movement he stands for.
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he → ’m → Trump
Do you want to give us your elevator pitch?
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you → want → pitch
If I had to give you a thesis, it would be that Donald Trump is a unique figure in our politics, that there aren’t a lot of other people like him, because of his relationship to America for decades and decades, not just as a television game show host, but as somebody who lived on Page Six, somebody who wrote The Art of the Deal, someone who’s been on all of these luminaries and talk shows.
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who → have → luminaries
Obviously, he had strong relationships with every sort of big radio personality, and so he was omnipresent for the public.
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he → have → public
Sometimes people say, well, we need to run a celebrity like Donald Trump.
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we → say → Trump
And I say, no, celebrities are different.
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celebrities → say → ?
People may be like, I like Brad Pitt or I like The Rock, but they’re playing characters.
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they → like → characters
Donald Trump has always been who he is, and that has given him this unbelievable natural advantage in the psyche of the American public.
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that → give → public
When I do focus groups with voters, which I do all the time, they say, well, he’s a businessman.
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he → do → which
They don’t even think of him as a failed businessman, they think of him as a rich person who has been a developer, who’s run television shows, owned a football team, and so on.
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who → think → team
There aren’t a lot of people who can compete with that in public life and translate that into political power, which he has.
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he → be → which
The Republican Party then totally abdicated to Donald Trump.
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Party → abdicate → Trump
They stopped having ideas, they stopped having candidates that had their own sort of pitch for who they are.
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they → stop → pitch
Now it’s a cult of personality, which means that as he is on his way out, there is a unique opportunity in this moment to put him in the rearview mirror and not let it linger, if Democrats or the broader pro-democracy coalition are able to rally together and dominate the Republicans going into the next three or four years.
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Democrats → ’ → years
Let’s get a little bit more specific about some of the ways in which Democrats have failed to do that.
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Democrats → let → that
You have an interesting story of moderating an event with Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney, and you argue that part of the problem is that voters didn’t really know Kamala Harris.
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voters → have → Harris
It speaks to what you’re saying about Brad Pitt being popular, but running Brad Pitt is not going to work because people don’t know Brad Pitt in the way they knew Donald Trump.
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they → speak → Trump
Why is it that voters didn’t know who Kamala Harris was?
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Harris → know → ?
And was that a personal failing of Kamala Harris as a political candidate, or is that a broader symptom of how Democrats are failing to respond to this political, technological, ideological moment?
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Democrats → fail → moment
Longwell: I don’t want to pick on Kamala Harris too much, but I do want to say that Kamala Harris absolutely should not run for president again.
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Harris → want → president
I’m clear about that in the book.
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I → ’m → book
That’s not because I don’t like Kamala Harris.
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I → ’ → Harris
I actually think Kamala Harris very much outperformed expectations when she ran.
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she → think → expectations
I think she was done dirty by Joe Biden and his team, who never did anything to elevate her and then wouldn’t let her put any daylight between Biden and herself.
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her → think → Biden
This is just nitpicking but what do you mean, they didn’t let her?
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they → mean → her
I know they tried to bully her, but just fucking pick something you disagree with and say it…
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you → know → it
Well, you’re making a great point.
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you → make → point
But that’s the failure.
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that → ’ → ?
Part of the failing is that Kamala Harris didn’t know who she was in a strong enough way to go out and do that.
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she → know → that
So when Joe Biden’s team says to her, no daylight, kid—what they were saying is, if you start crapping on us, we’re gonna crap on you back.
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we → say → you
That kind of garbage makes me insane because it speaks to the broader disconnect between Joe Biden and Democrats who’ve been telling voters that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, but then don’t act like it.
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Trump → make → it
They let all their petty grievances get in the way of it.
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grievances → let → it
But to your point, after Kamala Harris lost, I went back and listened to all the focus groups again with this hindsight.
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I → lose → hindsight
And the thing that was so clear in there, and I saw it when I was listening in real time, but I don’t know that I heard it as loudly as it was being expressed by the voters, was, I don’t know who she is.
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she → see → voters
I don’t know what she stands for.
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she → know → what
I don’t trust her.
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I → trust → her
I don’t know anything about her.
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I → know → her
…and 281 more, not listed.
