Meal Prep - The Voters - How We Got Here

Grace: 00:00:00

Hi, it's Grace, and this is a special edition of Frogmore Stew. As we edge closer to Election Day, Caitlin, TJ, and I are excited to bring you a second helping of meal prep. For many of us, especially here in the South, discussing politics has become a tricky and even tense subject. That's why we're here to help create a calm, thoughtful space. One that focuses on the personal stories and beliefs of people from every corner of our state.

Grace: 00:00:43

In this series, you'll hear directly from neighbors who share how they formed their political views. and what issues they feel most deeply about. We'll also speak with candidates from the upstate to the low country, those running for both state house and state Senate to see how their priorities align with voters like you. It's been an eye-opening experience and we hope listening is as interesting and meaningful for you as it was for us to create. Let's dive in. What in your lifetime has been the most memorable political event or experience.

Rosemary: 00:01:17

In my lifetime, the most memorable event was the passage of the Obamacare. Of Obamacare? Really? Why? Why? Mm hmm. People who previously were not able to have health insurance now have it. Okay. Does 9 11 count? Yeah, absolutely.

Voter A: 00:01:38

Because I would say without a doubt 9 11. Cecil.

Cecil: 00:01:41

I would have to agree. And we were lucky enough to actually be with our whole management staff. On that day up at Pauley's Island, and it was good to be with people you loved. It was good to be able to hold hands and pray because you just didn't know what the next thing that happened was going to be.

Grace: 00:01:58

I think that this question was important because it helps you understand. What their fears are about politics and how politics affects them. The first voter, her name is Rosemary, healthcare in her lifetime has been really important to her. And I think that's fascinating because there are so many people that haven't been able to have healthcare and Obamacare changed that. I think she represents a lot of voters. Now, whether or not that's their number one priority in voting is debatable. And then I think for the other two, 9 11 was a theme across a lot of our voters. That really scared a lot of people and it made a lot more people pay attention to international policy.

Katelyn: 00:02:39

I think there's so many things that come into play here. I think socioeconomic status really is driving force around the healthcare conversation in America. And I think 9 11 left an imprint on people. and either pushed them to more isolationist views or more positive images about America and democracy, etc. You went to the two extremes with 9 11. I remember there being a large swath of people who were really against the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's just interesting that those moments sit in our minds. And push us to further cement our political beliefs.

Grace: 00:03:22

The other thing that I find interesting, the first person, Rosemary, she's 86. She was alive during World War II and Vietnam. A lot of times, the most memorable political experiences are wrapped around some fear and war often pushes that out. This says a lot about whether or not they were going to be able to have health care.

Katelyn: 00:03:45

Health care is real. Listen, I went to the emergency room two weeks ago for something. I was there for four hours. And my bill was 16, 000, Grace. Oh my God. 16, 000. Now, thank God, I have insurance, and I ultimately ended up paying about 2, 500. But 16, 000, that kind of money for people who don't have insurance are debilitating. They would rather die than have 16, 000 worth of debt or avoid going to the point of death or no return.

Grace: 00:04:21

And even you're part of it. That's a paycheck for a lot of people. Exactly. Okay, let's listen to two more voters what they said the most memorable political event was.

Allie: 00:04:32

So I actually wound up at Trump's inauguration party. My husband and I and family lived in Baltimore for 18 years and when he was elected, we had a bunch of friends in DC and they said, Hey, we're going to camp out at the restaurant and the bar at his hotel. The big, I guess it was the post office and dress up. We're going to act like we belong there. Eric Trump was there.

Allie: 00:04:57

Tiffany Trump was there. A friend of mine had too many drinks and grabbed me and said, I'm going to introduce you to Eric Trump. And I was like, okay, no problem. So she introduced me as like one of the biggest donors. Obviously I had given some money to the campaign, not anything significant, but he was like so gracious and thankful and whatever. So they moved into a smaller room and we just went with a crowd that was dressed up and acted like we belonged. It was a cast of characters. And

Grace: 00:05:22

this was 2016.

Allie: 00:05:23

Correct.

Voter B: 00:05:24

I don't know. I would say maybe 9 11. The way George W. Bush responded to that, we were more, I think, Reagan Republicans. The party has changed so much. I don't, it's It's very different today.

Grace: 00:05:40

There's something to unpack. Kaitlin, what you got?

Katelyn: 00:05:45

Listen, I've been to an inauguration and an inaugural party. It really is this huge imprint on you. And I think being caught up in the excitement of that night is very impactful.

Grace: 00:05:58

That first person, she's in her late 30s. And a lot of the younger people that are voting, particularly the 18 to 25 year olds, The only Republican Party that they know is the Trump Republican Party. They grew up thinking that Trump's party is the norm for the party, and his type of politics is normal. Trump is a superstar, and so getting to go to his inauguration is obviously a big deal. The second one, she defined herself as a Reagan Republican, as a conservative. When you hear some older people talk, because they have that, what Ronald Reagan was like versus what Trump is like, they have a vast difference of opinion on what the Republican Party is. should be.

Katelyn: 00:06:44

Yeah, I certainly agree. I think there's a lot of conversation right now about young white men in particular being seen as not necessarily having as much of a political place in the Democratic Party because the vast diversification of the platform and of the constituents of the Democratic Party and hearing a lot of challenging narratives around the dominance of young white men or white men in general, and they feel more comfortable in that Republican setting and platform. And so it's interesting to hear that played out maybe on the female side here.

Grace: 00:07:22

What in your lifetime has been the most memorable political event or experience?

Voter C: 00:07:28

In my lifetime, oh, gosh, there's been several. I would say, obviously, 9 11 is huge. Certainly, that's a big one. I think the Ronald Reagan era. I was pretty young, but I just remember The Berlin

Grace: 00:07:44

Wall. The Berlin Wall. He was driving. As much as we all talk about how far apart we are, there are key events that we all share. And how we come out of those events, is where our political views are then determined. What we feel about those events, and what we should do about those events. I think his thing, the 9 11, that crossed a lot of generations when that happened.

Grace: 00:08:12

So he's in his 50s, so he was probably in his early 20s when 9 11 happened. And it affected him pretty similarly. to the other couple that we had on that were in their 70s. A lot of the younger voters that we'll hear from later, they weren't as affected by that because they weren't scared. And those of us that were working adults when 9 11 happened, It scared the crap out of us.

Katelyn: 00:08:39

Yeah, he also brought up the Berlin Wall, which really gets my brain rolling on the Cold War and how the shift in the Republican Party over the last 60 years with regard to their approach to Russia and the head of Russia during the Cold War and how There almost seems to be a reverence for Putin among some of the electorate in the Republican Party now and how Putin is a strong leader and commanding and holds a lot of power.

Grace: 00:09:13

There's such a difference of generations when You grew up being scared of Russia. I remember being in grade school and learning about what life was like in Russia and being really afraid of that. The underlying message of learning about Russia was that communism is bad. Now what that's been turned into, is Democrats or Communists. So I think that the younger generations, when they hear Trump say that they don't fully understand what we were taught Communism is as children during the Cold War.

Grace: 00:09:49

And I think there's a big disconnect in how we grew up feeling about Russia versus what is, I feel like, a more financial based political party on the Republican side, as it applies to Trump. Mm hmm. Because he looks at that relationship much more transactionally versus I think a lot of the old school Republicans saw that as a more relationship based on ideology.

TJ: 00:10:18

May I ask a question, please?

Grace: 00:10:20

Please, TJ, jump in.

TJ: 00:10:21

Did the topic of January 6th come up with anybody in these focus groups as an important political event in their lifetime?

Grace: 00:10:31

Not one person mentioned it.

TJ: 00:10:33

And that's the one, and believe me, I was stationed in Europe in the army during the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9 11 and nothing that has happened in my nearly 65, 70 years on this planet had ever happened. Anywhere close to the impact on me that what I watched on January 6th had on me. And I was just curious whether that hit any other age demographic, or am I just out here in orbit by myself somewhere?

Grace: 00:11:08

Because how we receive and digest media so differently now. The story's been retold for a lot of people, and I think people believe it. When something happened, like Chris McCullough, for example, in the 80s when the space shuttle blew up, every single kid in this country was watching, and the telling of the story was the same across the board. So I think that because We are all receiving news and digesting it through very different lenses. I don't think that one story was as impactful on everyone as other things have been in our past. Wow. Caitlin, what do you think? I

Katelyn: 00:11:50

believe that people really think that January 6th was a valiant fight. And then there's the other half. Who see January 6th as the biggest threat to democracy since the founding of America, the fact that we have such a dichotomy between those two positions, that there's talk about pardoning people who facilitated 140 police officers being injured, and it's a half a dozen police officers who died, many more who committed suicide within the year after January 6th. This was a really significant event from the inside of our own country. I agree with you, TJ. I think it's probably one of the biggest moments in my life. I lost friends over it, and it's surprising to me that none of your focus groups talked about it. Grace?

Grace: 00:12:45

I think another reason that people didn't talk about it is because politically we don't understand this unfettered love of country because we haven't necessarily had to watch our brothers or fathers in a mass scale go off and fight a war. of what's happening right now with the vitriol every single day that we're hearing and seeing. January 6th, just as hard as it is to say, just wasn't that impactful on us as a country.

Katelyn: 00:13:17

I'm not going to lie. It is so tough to sit here and listen to you say that. Yeah. I think you're saying it on top of news that just broke that former President Trump's chief of staff, General John Kelly, said on the record with the New York Times that Trump often lamented. John Kelly said this. That he wishes he had generals like Hitler and to me, that can just continues to support the fact that he was, he was okay with what was happening on January 6th and listen, no one has ever called me an uber patriot. I definitely grew up questioning a lot of America's decisions and in fact have.

Katelyn: 00:14:00

I've been questioned about my love for the States sometimes because I question so much, but I come from the methodology that if you question something, pay attention to it, talk about it all the time. It's because you care. It's because you love your country so much. It's because you want it to be better. And this support or demand for support that does not involve questioning, to me, is actually unpatriotic, because that's not what democracy calls for.

TJ: 00:14:28

Again, if I may, as I'm listening to you two talk about this back and forth, we are from different generations, but I grew up with an American truth. This was what it was. This is why we do. This is how we do. It was just the American way. I guess you could say there is no such thing anymore. There is no American truth. Now there is your truth and her truth and his truth. Bottom line, we will never get to the point, I don't think, again, where we can come together as Americans for the American truth.

TJ: 00:15:03

I think it just depends on who shows up and who doesn't, as to what the immediate American truth is going to be. I think we're in a different dimension of being an American than we were. And I don't know how, other than just showing up and doing what I can do to defend my truth at the polls, is really about the only way I can try to put it back together. Does that make sense?

Katelyn: 00:15:28

It does, TJ, and I gotta say, most of the time when we record these, I don't get that emotional. I get excited and we talk. I'm feeling Really emotional about this. Yes, I am a white person, so I do have some privilege there. But the American truth historically has been defined by people who had the power. And what I would say is that we are demanding that the American truth include more people and safety of more people. And not the safety from people outside of the United States, which I think the American truth often pitted us against someone, which is why the Cold War saw such a rise in American patriotism because we had an enemy.

Katelyn: 00:16:11

But the enemy for a lot of Americans sits within the country. My rights are being taken away as a woman. My rights didn't really exist before 2014 to marry my wife. So I personally feel, and I know Other people feel this way, I am worried about what's happening in this country, because I don't feel safe in this country with rights that I either had and that were taken away or are on the balance or brink of not existing anymore.

Grace: 00:16:40

So I think this goes back a little bit to what you just said. which is when we were fighting the Cold War, we had, as a country, an enemy outside of the U. S. And during 9 11, patriotism was at an all-time high. Because again, we as a country had a common enemy. And I think that since 9 11, we have not had an experience as a country where we are all on the same page, that our enemy is the same.

Grace: 00:17:15

And so what that's turned into is we have turned against each other. We as a country can't even agree on who our enemy is. That's a real problem and we shouldn't have to wait to be bombed again or have Americans taken hostage or fighting a war with our soldiers and troops going overseas to find that unity.

Katelyn: 00:17:42

And I think that there were people in the U. S. who felt That the American truth didn't represent them at the height of American patriotism. We saw that with the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. I think we're in a really uncomfortable place because we are trying to figure out what the next version of the American truth or American dream looks like. And nobody has a unifying answer yet.

TJ: 00:18:08

And that's exactly what I was trying to say, Caitlin. Thank you. I think what worries me the most is what happens over the next decade as we stumble around each other and threaten each other and fear each other to try to figure out what the way forward is. That, I think, can turn into something none of us want to happen. I just am very concerned about where we go and what we do to each other in the next ten years. People talk about the economy. They talk about abortion. They talk about different things being the issue.

TJ: 00:18:41

To me, that is the issue because I know now that the American truth I had growing up and went to the military and swore allegiance to the constitution for all of that. Now that I look back, I see that a lot of people. didn't have that, and that truth was not a glorious thing for them. But where we're headed right now, I don't think is a glorious truth for anybody.

Grace: 00:19:05

One of the questions that I asked that I felt like no one really understood. And so the answers were like, I don't even want to play them because the answers weren't really to the question that I asked. But the question was, if you were traveling in another country or you were living in another country. and you ran into someone from South Carolina, and you were missing home. What would you want to talk to them about? What would you want to reminisce with them about? Like, I, I wanted them to think about the things that we as South Carolinians all love.

Grace: 00:19:44

What do we all have in common? And I'm going to ask that question again when we do this another time, because I think people really do have an affinity for this state. I don't think it's because of our politics. I think it's because of the people and the just amazing natural resources and beauty that we have. And I think that's going to be important for us as we move forward on this podcast is reminding people. That we don't have to be in fear of something. We should be in love with something together.

TJ: 00:20:25

The Frogmore Stew Podcast is written and hosted by Grace Cowen Editing and IT support by Eric Johnson, produced by TJ Phillips with the Podcast Solutions Network.