What 2024 Taught Us

Discussion post for December 17, 2024

Zora Neale Hurston once said:

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

This year has been a lot of both. Today, Sarah and Beth talk about the trends, moments, and roller coaster of 2024. They have some observations that I know will resonate with all of us (“Avoidance is not a strategy” is for sure going on a note card beside my desk in 2025) and honest insight “I saw what I wanted to see until I couldn’t.” We’re excited for you to listen to this episode and join us in reflecting on the lessons and learnings we want to take from this year.

Topics Discussed:

• Reflecting on 2024

• Outside of Politics: Open Houses

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Episode Resources:

What 2024 Taught Us

• Classified! (More to Say | Pantsuit Politics)

• Top Harris Campaign Staff Tell Us What Went Wrong In 2024 Election (Pod Save America)

OOP: Open Houses

• Audrey (Listen to the Classics with an Expert Guide)

• The Art of Gathering (Priya Parker)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.

Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.

[00:00:29] Thank you so much for joining us today. This is the last week before everyone at Pantsuit Politics takes time off to be with our families for the holidays. And we wanted to spend this week looking both backward and forward. Today we're going to ask what 2024 has taught us. And not to bury the lead, it's been a weird year that has prompted a lot of re-examinations for us. Outside of Politics we are going to talk about what hosting open houses has taught us and how we're thinking about hospitality and the importance of being with other people in 2025.

Sarah [00:00:59] Before we begin, we wanted to remind you that a cameo from us is a great gift to the Pantsuit Politics listener in your life. We love making these short, personalized videos for you all, and we do them for everything: graduations, Christmas, birthdays. My favorite is when people just buy themselves a pep talk; when they're just like I need you to encourage me. And I love making those.

Beth [00:01:20] We also got to do a Bon Voyage recently, which was very fun and an engagement. They're all the best.

Sarah [00:01:26] They're all the best. Now, if you want to order one of those and have it before the end of the year, though, the deadline is this Thursday, December 19th, because as much as we like making them, I don't want to be making one like after the Christmas pageant on Christmas Eve. So Thursday, December 19th, if you want a Cameo before the end of the year.

Beth [00:01:43] And another great option for gifting is a subscription to our Substack premium community. You can buy that on December 24th. That'll just happen automatically and we'll be there in minutes for the person you love. So you can find the link for our Substack community and for our Cameo page and all of our other gifting options in the show notes. Thank you so much for supporting our small business during this gifting season. Next up, let's talk about the year that has been 2024.

[00:02:09] Music Interlude.

[00:02:20] Sarah, I have always loved the Zora Neale Hurston quote, "There are years that I ask questions and years that answer." And I just think 2024 has been both.

Sarah [00:02:29] 2024 has been a trial. Trials always ask a lot of questions, give a lot of answers. I can't help as I look back over 2024 but see the very bifurcated nature of this year. When I was reviewing everything, I knew it when it was happening; but to go back and realize how close in time we had this before and after moment in the year, it's on June 27th, we have the debate. We have the immunity decision from the Supreme Court on July 1st. And then the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on July 13th. That's wild. As I look back over our nine years of podcasting, I cannot think of another time where so many truly earth shattering events happened in such a short, compact period of time. I can go back and look at the markings on the road. The overturning of Roe V Wade, the Kavanaugh trial, obviously Covid, but this felt like an alien ship picked us up and put us on a new road and we had to adjust in about four and a half minutes.

Beth [00:03:46] Yeah. Usually it takes a while to figure out that you had just been through a before and after moment. This year you felt it in real time. This is a before and after moment. It's happening right now. And the fact that so many happened in such a short span of time during a time that's usually pretty sleepy for the year, right around the July 4th holiday, when truly most of America takes a break in some form, it was really unmooring. And I think in a lot of ways I'm still trying to figure out what that period meant and what it has to say and what it portends for next year.

Sarah [00:04:27] One thing I have concluded is that it was so shocking in part because I had ignored all the red flags up until that point. I had seen only what I wanted to see when it came to Joe Biden. Because should the debate performance have been surprising if I had taken Robert Hur seriously when he put forward his report on the classified documents? Probably not. Should the Supreme Court decision have felt so upending if I had not just been telling myself throughout the Republican primary he's going to lose. People don't want four more years of this. Everyone sees how he is. Like all of it. I even did it with Elon Musk. I went back and looked at the notes from our end of year show last year and we were talking about Elon's debt's going to come due, he's going to have-- and here he is higher than ever. Especially with those three men, I just always wanted to see-- even with Robert Kennedy, to a certain extent, I just wanted to see what I wanted to see. And so, yeah, that time period was so upending. And also the election itself felt like I was just seeing what I knew to be true the whole time.

Beth [00:05:59] I think that's closely related to something that I feel that I learned this year, which is that avoidance is not a strategy. I remember covering the Robert Hur report for More to Say and talking about how I didn't think the media coverage of it was particularly fair because everybody hopped right on to say this is bullshit; he should never have made these comments about how Joe Biden comes across. And I was trying to explain that you do have to evaluate the credibility of a witness when you're assessing whether or not to bring charges. If you don't remember the Robert Hur report, this was about whether Joe Biden's possession of classified documents-- he had some in his garage, in his house in Delaware, in an office somewhere else, whether he should be charged in the same way that Donald Trump had been charged related to classified documents. Now, those are two very different cases we discussed at the time, and I won't go into that today.

[00:06:50] I saw what Robert Hur was trying to do. I thought not through a super partizan lens, but because the partizan lens so quickly took over the discussion in all spaces. I didn't return to it. I didn't keep bringing up, hey, remember that Robert her told us that the president is starting to come across like a well-meaning elderly man. And that's probably not going to be great in a primary. I think about this with Robert F Kennedy all the time. How much I wanted them to allow him on the debate stage because I really felt that if America saw him clearly, we could be done with him. And now we have him up for a very important post in the cabinet. And I wonder if we could roll back the clock and not avoid that, not avoid a Democratic primary, not avoid him as a third party candidate in the debate, if we would still be here. So I'm really looking back at all the places where I had warning alarms going off in myself and in my own analysis. But I just let them lay flat because I felt like that wasn't where the consensus was running. And the consensus over the last year has been a lot of avoidance.

Sarah [00:08:06] I think we all owe an apology to Robert Hur and Dean Phillips and all those people, but I'm not sure exposure to RFK would have hurt him. The only reason is that was my whole philosophy around Donald Trump. It's people know who he is. The second they're reminded, it'll be better. And I think another thing I did not take seriously enough was the Make America Healthy Again of it all. The way his arguments about chronic disease really appealed to people. And this sense that you can't trust the government, you can't trust the pharmaceutical industry, you can't trust the food industry. I can't figure out for the life of me, as I look back on 2024, why I felt so obligated to defend the status quo and institutions that I had a lot of critiques about. And I don't know if it was just because Donald Trump puts me in that posture. The defensive posture. But there was this way in which I don't even know if it was avoidance. It was defensiveness. I definitely avoided information that didn't fit my narrative right. But I also just felt defensive. I told you at one point after the election there were moments where I was defending the system to both my very, very far left wing son and my very, very right wing father. And I thought, what am I doing here? And neither of them were convinced. So I'm kind of trying to figure out was it avoidance? Was it defensiveness? What did I feel like I needed to ignore? What did I feel like I needed to defend and why?

Beth [00:09:55] I think there are a bunch of things going on here. I do want to say, to your point about Donald Trump and exposure, he had that instinct himself this year, which is why he used surrogates much more than the first time he ran. He laid very low compared to the way he normally operates. And I think his intention is to continue to lay pretty low.

Sarah [00:10:13] And bring in all these people who disagree with him.

Beth [00:10:16] Exactly. His version of The Avengers out there. When I attended the No Labels conference in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, which we'll talk more about on Friday's episode, I was so struck by how little people were talking about Donald Trump, members of Congress, and how much they were talking about Elon Musk. It felt like Elon Musk was the incoming president as much or maybe more than Donald Trump. So I think you were right about that and that he sensed that this time as well. And that was a good instinct that he had. To the defending the status quo, I've been thinking about this a lot in myself, too. One thing that I know is almost a chronic instinct of mine that I need to work on in a lot of context is that I have a tendency to defend things that are not okay when I am very aware of how much worse they could be. I definitely have done that with the economy because of how much you and I have read. And throughout Covid, we're reading about the parade of horribles that could follow an event like that. How deeply connected to history you are and how many opportunities you had to see that if this had been managed differently, we would be in a much, much worse position.

[00:11:33] So it's easy to say look how good it is because it could be so bad. When people are saying it's still pretty bad; I don't like the badness even if it could be worse. So I think that's part of it. Another piece that I am just really chewing on for myself is that I too often accept the terms of The Discourse. I'm reading so much from news to commentary to opinion that it does define the lines. And The Discourse for me is such a bubble compared to what it is for lots of people, or they're in their own bubbles and they have their own The Discourse. And then you have all these people who aren't tuned into any of that. And I think that coloring inside those lines has really limited my perspective this year. And I'm trying to think deeply about what I do to get out of that bubble next year.

Sarah [00:12:35] Well, and there's a part of it that we can't escape. I don't want to. I also get to be a citizen inside this discourse. I also get to think about all of these issues through the lens of how they directly affect me and my family. And there's nothing about that that I can escape. In fact, I think one of the things I'm happy we're all leaving behind in 2024 is the idea that we can do that. That we can occupy some sort of perspective where we know what's right and good for other groups or for addressing the systemic problems. And everyone should agree with us. 2024 has been a tough year, but there are always good lessons learned in tough years. And I do think one of the really breakthrough moments for me is the idea that you are who you are and that's not something that you need to apologize for. That it's okay to see things through the lens of your own personal experience. It's just that you also have to be open to other people's personal experience. And that I hope we're abandoning the idea that we have to pick the correct one, that we have to pick the good take, that we have to pick the moral and righteous political opinion. Because I think everybody, for the most part, has seen that did not serve us.

[00:14:05] It did not expand the debate. It did not lead to better policy solutions. It led to an election that pushed people into a very defensive posture, both in defense of the status quo and in defense of burning everything down. And so we weren't talking to each other; were we talking at each other? And so many things get missed. Even to the historical perspective, I think I got really stuck in how Covid changed everything and lost that there were longer tales that were also still affecting us. That everything that happened before Covid didn't get erased. The 2008 recession still matters. The Iraq war and the Afghanistan invasion still matters. Like those all still affect us. And expanding my understanding of that and letting all that in in a way that, again, is disruptive, it doesn't lead to an easy narrative about how I feel, how other people feel, what's the right way forward. But I think clinging so closely to that right way, to that one narrative, it just led me to miss so much. It just led me to miss so, so much.

Beth [00:15:21] I like how you said, "I get to be a citizen inside the system still." That connects to something I've been thinking about. I was really struck after the election by the number of emails and comments that we heard from listeners articulating that they read this election as an indictment of Americans as fundamentally selfish. And I've been thinking a lot about whether I see it that way, too. And even if I do, is there something wrong with that? Haven't people always acted first out of a sense of self-interest and maybe trying to fight that is just fighting human nature on some level? But I don't know if I read it that way because even the tendencies or the trend lines that you would take as about selfishness seemed to me to often be about pursuing the correct take of our team. And I have wondered, especially as I've been thinking about our work in 2025, if the best thing to do isn't to be a little bit more self-centered, to be more personal in my commentary, to be more attentive to my own experiences of things here in Kentucky. It's insane that sitting in Kentucky I would ever feel like I'm in a D.C. bubble. But I am sometimes because of my news consumption. And so how can I sink into my own personal experiences more?

[00:16:50] I learned the most from listeners when they write and say, "This is what happened to me," not this is what I heard someone say and I agree with it and it's true for all people in all times. And so that's got to be true of what I say, too. It's got to be better when it's coming from a really kind of self-centered personal place. Not that you stop caring about other people, but how can it be selfish to care about grocery prices when grocery prices hit the poorest among us the hardest always? Same thing with gas and utilities. I'm not making an argument for Trumpism. I think we elected the wrong person and I am very concerned about what the consequences of that will look like. But I don't want to analyze it in a way that writes off so much of the population. And I don't want to analyze it in a way that just reinforces everything I thought before the election. I want to learn something here. And I think part of what I'm learning is that sinking into your own experience and the expertise of your own life is probably better than just trying to say the right thing because that's where the community of people you want to be associated with is landing.

Sarah [00:17:57] Well, look, either diversity is a strength or it isn't. Either we believe that this big, messy country is stronger because it contains so many different types of people or we don't. The call to empathy is not a call to agreement. It is a call to understanding. And understanding is inherently complex and difficult and should absolutely leave you with more questions than answers. Now, that doesn't mean that I still won't look for threads. As I look back over this year, what I see is strain. What I see is an enormous amount of strain, not just in the United States, but around the world. France and Germany are going to limp across the finish line of 2024 with some huge challenges in front of them. And they're not the only country. I see so much strain even in businesses. I see a lot of hustle and flow from the AI industry coming right now. It's giving Wizard of Oz. You know what I mean? Like, look over here. Don't look over here. Just give us more money. That's all that really matters. Obviously, I see enormous amount of strain when it comes to health care that has bubbled up with the assassination of Bryan Thompson. I just see a lot of strain and you cannot ask people to rise through their better angels in a moment of intense strain and stress. That is not how human psychology works. It just isn't.

[00:19:34] And so as we continue to deal with a rapid pace of change, as we continue to deal with an economy that seems to just be decoupling from any reality that just goes up and up and up as we deal with China. And it's just in tense devotion to spying on us in the face of its own challenges. It's a lot. And what I feel most profoundly from all this strain is that Alise told us she kind of had this moment where she was like, my God, we're 25 years into the 21st century. We're a fourth of the way through. And what I feel from that strain is just that desire to continue to hold on to the lessons from the 20th century and the things that worked from the 20th century still. And I feel like 2024 is some big giant just snapping the ropes that are trying to hold it down and be like we're done. You can learn and history is still applicable. And so, so, so many ways, but like stop trying to cling to the learnings, the lessons, the parts you liked from the 90s and the 80s.

[00:20:44] And, listen, no one is this more applicable to than to Donald Trump because we're done and it doesn't work anymore. You remember at the beginning of the election I kept trying to articulate what rules still apply and what rules don't apply anymore to campaigning. And it feels like all of them. Some fundamentals are still true and will always be true, but lots of media consumption, advertising, foreign policy, the economy, health care, the presidential debate itself, that feels like a place in particular where we're just moving on to something new because now we've had this president who's lost presidential debates pretty handedly win, continuing to win the election. So there's all these places that it feels like to me like we're still holding on tightly. We're still trying to cling to what we knew to be true and not facing what 2024 was trying to tell us over and over and over again, which is stop straining. Everything's different now.

Beth [00:21:48] I think part of that strain for me in the current moment is when Chad opens the app that tracks our investments and I see everything rocketing up. And I feel the tension that that should be celebratory for us, that we've tried to save money and be smart about it. And this should all be good news. And I also we both know; we both sigh when we look at it. We know that it's running too hot. And everything feels a little bit like it's running too hot to me. The AI industry as a whole, I feel like what I keep hearing is we don't totally know how it works and a lot of people who work in this field are saying we should slow down because it's getting away from us and everybody else is saying foot on the accelerator. There will be a point when it all makes sense and it's all perfect. Just go on the ride with us. It's running too hot. We just have this overconsumption conversation and it feels like everything is just running a little too hot. And what we need is some calibration. In a sense of the question that you shared in that overconsumption episode, what do we want? What do we want now that everything is changing and has been changed by all these before and after moments that we've had. And instead the answer seems to be go, go, go, America. Let's just run up the score and we'll all be delighted once we've done that.

[00:23:25] Music Interlude.

Sarah [00:23:35] I just said that everything is different. Now I'm going to talk about the complete other side of my mouth and say, yeah, but what's the same is always the same. I read a really interesting article about AI, which is it's not scaling like they thought it would. They thought we'll plow more data in and every version will get ten times, 20 times 1000 times better, like Chat GPT three to Chat GPT four and it's just not happening. First of all, there's only so much data. We've sort of fed it the entire Internet. And second of all, it's the same thing we always do, which is just believe that it will get better forever. It's giving 1920s is what I'm saying. It's giving, of course, this will be another bubble, like the first online bubble and the second social media bubble. It's giving to me that we believe this time is different. Like, yes, we're entering a new phase. Absolutely. And we probably need to really recognize that. And also the learnings of the past phases are still there.

[00:24:41] The populism that has taken over the globe. That's not new. It's different. It's a new phase. It's different than what immediately came before. But it's not different than the phases that have bubbled up throughout human history especially in the early 20th century. Even the Elon Musk of it all, the people who just are occupying the field at greater and greater levels and then deciding where I really want to be ais in government. That's not new either. So it's this weird situation. I felt this throughout the election. Everything is different and still the lessons apply. And it's just so hard to swim through that in the midst of it and try to see clearly through the fog what's still real, what's all new? Even if it's all new, what lessons still apply?

Beth [00:25:39] Maybe what I'm trying to say that tracks with that sense that history repeats and recycles is also that history accumulates. And some of this strain I'm feeling right now is that accumulation. Take the drones and the drone freak out. We are going to have a problem for the foreseeable future with the fact that there's too much sky junk. There's space junk, which is going to be an issue. And there's sky junk. And now we don't know what the junk is in the sky and we're worried about it. And that is the perfect metaphor, I think, for some of what we feel down here on the ground, where everything is accumulating so quickly that it's hard to make sense of it. And so the easiest way to make sense of it is to try to sort it with me or against me, moral or amoral, good or bad. I think we're probably at the beginning of or well into maybe a religious resurgence in some ways, because I think we're looking for some kind of sorting capacity with all of this accumulation.

Sarah [00:26:47] That's what I keep thinking about with the technology and the social media. My 15 year old loves to look at me when I try to say get off your phone. It's really bad for you. And he'll go, book good; phone bad. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly right. Book good. Phone bad. And I can get in a space where I tell myself we've done this before. We freaked out about technology. I'm sure there's a rail road equivalent of the drone freak out. if you go back into American newspapers, I bet it would not be hard to find. You probably ask Chat GPT and it'll pull up right up for you. But when I think about that and I think about like, well, yeah, of course, people freaked out about rock and roll music and TV, but they were right to freak out about TV. You go back and read the books and the writings Amusing Ourselves to Death, you're like, shit, he was right. We ended up with the reality show president because politics became entertainment, because everything became entertainment and things suffered as a result.

[00:27:48] I think about this every year when we watch A Christmas Story with Ralphie in his classroom and what is he in? Third, fourth grade and he's reading Silas Marner. The standards have degraded. What's the argument? It has accumulated? And that accumulation weighs on us land it takes up space that is finite in our time, our energy, our attention, our institutions. I just don't know how you could argue any other way. And that's when the overconsumption, like, what do we want? And I just think it's so hard not to just get swept along. And maybe that is the reality of being a citizen, of being a human in the march of human history. It just goes. It just goes and you hold on as tight as you can because that's sure as hell how 2024 felt to me. It was going to go and I better hold on tight.

Beth [00:28:43] Well, that's the other thing about the accumulation. It contributes to a sense of powerlessness. It contributes to this feeling that we are stuck. We are part of the march of time. All the decisions have been made for us, and we are just here to bear the consequences of all those decisions that have been made before us. I feel that in response to another school shooting. I get in my head about how many school shootings there have been this year, how little we've talked about them on the show because I feel like we've said what we have to say about it. And as you look at people continuing to just buy more guns, the accumulation of the weapons out there makes me feel a little bit powerless and a little bit stuck. It is as if we understand what solutions could have been implemented but have taken them off the table passively. And now we just have to accept an unacceptable reality. And I think some of what I understand about the appeal of Donald Trump is that he, with no regard for facts or complexity, will say, "No, you don't. If you don't like it, we can change it. We can take it back." And I like the agency in that. I just wish it were accompanied by some grain of truth in planning.

Sarah [00:30:05] Well, where I really twist myself up in knots thinking about this, thinking about the I want it that way. In the immortal words of the Backstreet Boys. It's where I see these flashes that people are deeply unhappy. And I don't just mean in the election results. I see this bubbling up of the strain in ways that are not going to be released or lessened by the Trump administration. I think a lot and have thought a lot all year long about the growth of vices. The sort of wild, wild West approach America is currently taking to marijuana, gambling, porn, still to alcohol. Just the sense that I hope it works out okay for you. The conversation we've had a lot of times about individual choices in the face of the massive capitalization and profit off those vices. And I would include phones and social media in this, too. Multibillion dollar industries built on us making choices that feel good in the short term but have long term consequences. That's what a vice is. Maybe not. really, really bad long term consequences, but long term consequences for both the society and the individual.

[00:31:36] And that's where I can see people unhappy with it. I can see the strain, the frustration, this sense that this is not how I want things to be, but I I don't want any discomfort to improve them. That's what I have bumped up against so often in 2024. And probably why I felt defensive of the status quo because I thought, well, nobody wants to actually sacrifice to change the status quo. And not because people are shitty, but because coming off a pandemic people have probably had all their sacrifice that they can damn near take, right? Coming off a pandemic as if it wasn't five years ago. But the march of human history is long. And so that's what I keep seeing, though. I just keep seeing this sense of like people are unhappy with how this is playing out in their own lives and they're certainly unhappy with how it's playing out in their children's lives. And everyone feels like the ask is we'll just fix it individually. But everyone knows that that is a meager, ineffective solution.

Beth [00:32:43] And that fixing it beyond individually carries an incredible amount of risk, especially if you look at any of the people who would be charged with figuring out how to fix it collectively with skepticism. And everyone is justified in feeling some amount of skepticism about collective solutions. And so here you are trying to say, well, I don't feel good in my body; what can I personally do about it? I am on my phone too much; how can I personally address that problem? My kids seem to not be learning as much as I want them to or fitting in with friends as much as I want them to, or were too busy, or were not busy enough, or we are with people all the time but don't feel a sense of meaningful connection. Maybe I can find the right book or article or podcast that unlocks this for me and helps you make progress. And we do. We do make progress. We're incredibly resilient, and many of us change our lives in remarkable ways. And I never want to lose that sense that, yes, I can improve my circumstances always if I want to. And also it would be a lot easier if we could get together on some of these things.

Sarah [00:34:04] I just finished A Christmas Carol, Dickens classic about Scrooge. And I use this really cool app called Audrey, where they put in a scholar, and you have this guide and you learn a lot about the writing of the novel and what was happening at the time. And Dickens had done a lot of travel to poor houses and mining houses, and he saw the abject suffering of children in particular. Obviously, this is a theme throughout his work, but with A Christmas Carol, he thought, well, should I write a pamphlet and try to shame people into feeling a certain kind of way about how we treat the poor in Victorian England? Or should I write this story? And, look, we have made improvement. There is a degrading of standards that I think is hard to argue with. And also an improvement of the lived experiences of the majority of humans on this planet. Both things are true at the same time. And so, I think about Scrooge and I think about this individual journey he takes, but how Dickens was making an argument about society. Because I think we have to hold both.

[00:35:16] And, look, for my many, many problems with him, my many, many, many, many problems with him, I do think Donald Trump gets that. I do think Donald Trump has a way of articulating there are big problems I'll fix for you so you can do what you want and make your own success and make the life you want. Because people want both. They don't just want help. They don't just want a story about how they've been mistreated and their victims and we're going to help you. That's not the story people want to tell about themselves. People want a story where society is built that they can build their own success without stepping all over other people-- but they will if they have to. But they prefer not to. And so people aren't stepping on them. And I think that's what's so hard. And I think the disempowering, particularly of just what I'm going to generously call rot that occupies so much of this year, the corruption of it all, the Eric Adams, the George Santos-- I forgot about good old George Santos because he was in the before time, before the middle of the year. But him and I think even I would include Hunter in this and the P Diddy of it all, there's just this idea that not only are you in my way, but the system, this society is built to benefit the worst of the worst. Not only am I not getting ahead and I'm a good person, but the bad people are getting all the way to the front of the line. And that perpetuates that sense of powerlessness and the hatred and the populism and it's just you look back at 2024, it is hard to avoid that sense of rot.

Beth [00:37:00] I think that's true. I want to go back to what you said about the story that people want to tell. A question that I want to train myself to ask. Going into the new year is which people? So again in that idea of how do we embrace our diversity and embrace the fact that we are a country where people are having vastly different experiences of their everyday lives even as a lot can access. I think some people do want help. I think we have a number of people in the country who are crying out to say my health care is too expensive and it's not working for me. Health insurance is a scam. My student loans were a con that I'd like someone to free me from. You could make a very long list, right? And that's a lot of people. Even as we had a decisive election result, still a close election result, we still have so many people who have a completely different vision for what political leadership should deliver to America than others.

[00:38:04] Now, in terms of lessons for the Democratic Party, I think understanding where the opportunities are to grow that coalition requires a reframing of the story that's being told about what political leadership ought to deliver. But that will carry risk because, man, there are still a lot of people who want the government is here to help you message. And I just wonder if we're not better off even as we get at things like the rot, the deep corruption that has been exposed in a number of spaces over the past year; if we're not better off going smaller. I've spent a lot of time thinking about Eric Adams. Should I? He's the mayor of New York. That's both important and also completely inconsequential to my everyday life. This connectedness that we have is overwhelming to me. Would I feel better in my life, would I see more clearly the people that I am trying to make decisions with and make progress with here in my community and my state if I turn down some of the noise about the big picture rot? I don't know the answer to that. It's just a question that I'm struggling through right now.

Sarah [00:39:21] Well, if I look back to the early 20th century and you think about the abundance, the excess, the rot, the answer post-depression with the local. With the let's build, let's employ Americans to build up America and then the world just came knocking in a way we could not avoid. And I look around at this year of elections and how winning is easy but governing is harder, and how, again, France is struggling; Germany struggling; China is struggling economically; Russia's definitely going to continue to struggle in the face of hundreds of thousands of citizens sent to die on the front lines in Ukraine. And Iran... I just feel like the world is going to come knocking. And I think it is good and important to go local and to focus on your local community. And that definitely seems to be the answer so many people have come to post to the election. I think the world is going to come knocking. I think when you look around, it's not just America that's experiencing strain and I think that's related. And at the beginning of 2024 I could not have articulated a middle East that looks the way it does now. It's mind blowing to me. The ways in which we went from October 7th and Hamas upended and the things in a way that have put them where they want to be. There was this articulation that Al-Sinwar was a winner and so was Netanyahu.

[00:41:08] And now it's just wiped. Not only is Hamas right, but Hezbollah is wiped. Assad is gone. And Iran is crippled in a way that I can't decide is encouraging or discouraging because who knows? Again, who could have articulated this at the beginning of 2024? That's the thing. This is what I keep thinking about with the flashes where I see real strain like CrowdStrike, like AI, like Make America Healthy Again, and Brian Thompson, all these flashes where you see, oh, and every cell in your being goes, red flag. You cannot articulate what that's going to mean. Even all this writing at the end of the year about bird flu. If every pandemic was wholly predictable, they wouldn't be pandemics. Maybe it'll be bird flu, but most likely whatever hits us next is something no one sees coming yet. Because that's what makes it so impactful is that it was unpredictable. It's like that moment in Wicked where she's looking and she can see the glimmer of the first movie with Dorothy and everything in her melting. And you can you know what it is, but she doesn't quite know what it is. I just feel like 2024 was full of those moments.

Beth [00:42:32] Well, one thing that I think we got right about the election in 2023 even when people were starting to talk about 2024 and what that election was going to be, we said all along, nobody knows. If you think you know, you don't know. And I feel that profoundly about 2025.

Sarah [00:42:54] Another thing we articulated a lot was that we were going to ignore polling. And that polling was irrelevant and polling predicted the discussion. And I'm just wondering if on the other side of this election where we feel like the polling was pretty accurate, where are you at on that come 2026 or 2028.

Beth [00:43:17] I stand by the decision to not relentlessly discuss the polling. I also think the polling was good. I think the polling has been pretty good for the past few cycles, even as there's a lot of commentary about how polling is done. I think the polling has been pretty good and it's hard to imagine that it won't remain pretty good as we have more and more systems with more and more predictive power. Now, something will disrupt that, too. I think you're right that there's going to be a little bit of an air bubble. I don't know exactly what that's going to look like. And I don't think it means that we go all the way back to the before times. But it doesn't bother me that we didn't talk about the polling a lot. It bothers me that I personally allowed myself to hold out a lot of hope in spite of the polling.

Sarah [00:44:11] Yeah, I feel like the polling was another thing I ignored because it told me things I didn't want to hear at the end of the day. And so I'm trying to figure out what will that mean for next time? Because I still believe that polling can take on a predictive tone. It does what you described. It occupies the discussion in a way that limits what's available. But I keep thinking about the Harris campaign knowing that she was five points behind on their internal polling the whole time and running the careful campaign they did. I think what were you doing? What were you doing? Did you just think that the shortened form of the campaign itself was enough risk and you couldn't take on any more risk? But to know that that's what the polling was telling you the whole time and to make the decisions that they did is confusing to me. I think there is a little I hope learning from 2024 and that campaign in particular that there's got to be some more room for risk when there is this strain, when everybody feels that everything is changing, holding so tight to the status quo and avoiding risk and the professionalization is not going to get it done. It's not what people want.

Beth [00:45:34] Well, as I was doing my personal stock take of this year and thinking about next year, capacity for risk cap surfacing for me. We have clearly chosen as a country to deprioritize stability in favor of change. And part of the reason that I've been so careful about discussing Trump's Cabinet announcements or the policies he's rolling out Truth Social and X and in scattered press conferences is that I don't want to think that I know what I don't know. And I want to understand that this is going to be a very live administration. Living, breathing, adapting constantly is what Trump does best. And so I'm not trying to avoid with what's coming as much as keep my feet on the ground and stay true to what I know today. But I think talking about the capacity for risk is a lot of where Friday's conversation is going to go for us. Because on Friday, when we come back with all of you, we want to talk about what we see coming in 2025 and how we're thinking about it. And the first piece of that for me is letting go of any notion of stability as a priority.

[00:46:50] Music Interlude.

[00:47:00] We always try to end our episodes with an exhale. We've called it Outside of Politics for years. Sarah, I wonder if we should let that go in 2025 because nothing is totally apolitical. But I like the idea of an exhale.

Sarah [00:47:13] I want to push back against that. I think we should reclaim spaces that aren't political and let go of the idea that every damn thing from your Starbucks cup to your movie to your whatever is political. So, no, I reject that. Some things are and should remain outside of politics. I think that's what America wants too for the record.

Beth [00:47:33] Well, we'll give it our college try then. So today we're going to talk about open houses. You've hosted an open house around the holidays for years. I just had one on Saturday and I want to circle up with you because I found as much as I very much enjoyed seeing and spending time with people, that the open house format is not a match for my personality.

Sarah [00:47:55] Now, you had the movie open house where you were showing holiday movies. You talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

Beth [00:48:00] I did. I was so excited about the concept and I found a couple of things that just did not work for me. And I think most of them are about the open houseness of it because people were coming and going. No one really sat down to watch a movie until the very end. The only movie that I watched was Die Hard at the very end. Also, I had different movies playing on different floors in my house, which made me feel very strained to see everybody and be in both spaces. And the flow of people was hard. There were moments when almost no one was there. And then there were moments when the bulk of people who were going to be there were there. And then it felt, I think, weird for people to leave once they were there. I didn't have any clue how many people were coming or when they were coming, and so trying to have a good amount of snacks out. It just all felt really complicated to me in a way that I did not enjoy.

Sarah [00:49:01] Well, let me tell you the positives of the open house. Yes, we have had a holiday open house on the Sunday before Christmas for almost 15 years. We missed one year when Nicholas lost his job and we truncated the guest list and had an ugly Christmas party. But other than that, we have had an open house from since 2010. What I really like about it, particularly on Saturday afternoons, is you're not competing with a bunch of other holiday events. So you don't have to compete for the very finite amount of Saturday nights because there's lots of office parties or family gatherings. So that's what I always liked about--

Beth [00:49:36] Sports. We’re competing with a whole lot of sports on Saturday.

Sarah [00:49:38] So Sunday afternoon is just nice and it's an open time frame. So if you have something, you can come within the three hours. So we usually do it from 1:00 to 4:00, and I really like that. The other thing I really like about it is because I live in a small town, we are friends or acquaintances with a lot of different groups, a lot of generations. So it's everybody from like Nicholas's coworkers to members of our church congregation to neighbors to our social circle. So I really like that this sweeps up everybody like this. I can get everybody in this gathering. I really like to see the different groups interact. That was always one of my favorite parts of the open house. It's to see members of my church congregation get to know my family or have my family meet some of Nicholas's coworker. So I really like that. I like the multigenerational aspect of it. That was always one of my favorite parts of the open house.

[00:50:31] But it's a whirlwind. It feels like I'm welcoming people. I'm saying hi, I'm getting drinks and more people come. And there's not a lot of time to really sit and visit with people because of the constant influx of new people. We never really knew how many people were going to come. Although, as I look back over the 10 plus years, it was always about 40 to 50 people. But Nicholas did all the food. So that was an enormous amount of work. And having kids around running is always sort of stressful. And mainly the main reason we abandoned this year is we were just kind of bored. We've been doing it for so long, we were ready to mix it up. But an open house is a lot of work. I think it just depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for sort of a deep connection and a really, really connective visit, I don't think an open house is for you. But if you're looking to sweep up a lot of diverse groups of people in a way that feels sort of festive and all-encompassing that, I think it's great.

Beth [00:51:33] I've really been working on this this year. I've tried to be much more inclusive. I have sent out invitations to lots and lots of people and tried to have events that included many generations and people I know in different ways, people I'm not super close to who are close to me and proximity and see gatherings happening at my house. I've just tried to think, how can I make my table bigger this year? I don't know how successful that's been. And I've been thinking about why that is. And I think part of it is that I maybe just value hospitality in a different way than many other people do. I take it really seriously when I'm invited to something. I try to RSVP quickly. I try to show up if I said I'm going to show up. I try to be a really gracious guest. It feels like a gift to me when someone invites me, especially into their home. That feels like a gift. It's expensive to host people. It's time consuming. It's a lot of work. Even if you put all that to the side and do what we encourage people to do: order takeout or do something cheap, just get together with people, don't worry about your house.

[00:52:43] Even then, it's a lot of vulnerability and risk to invite people into your home. And I just get the sense that I'm really serious about that and that's not the mood in general. That I think maybe it feels more burdensome to lots of people because they are so busy and have so many obligations and that the friction of interacting with people who aren't part of your immediate social circle is too much. So I'm trying to think about that sense. How do I be a person who makes the table bigger, who expresses to all the people in my life no matter how intense our connection is? You have a place here. I want you to feel comfortable in my home. Part of it is I look around when people are in my house and think I hope everybody here knows that if something goes really sideways in their lives we have a guestroom for them. I hope everybody here knows that there is a sense of love in us inviting them to come into this space. But I just don't know that that's the way it's received. So I'm soul searching about hospitality.

Sarah [00:53:46] Well, look, I don't think we have a culture that's focused on hospitality, depending on where you are in the country. But, overall, you go to a country like Japan, you go to a country like Italy, you get really quickly that we are different here. That we are more individualistic. We're going to talk about this on our conversation about our slow read Democracy in America in a week or so. So we're more individualistic, we're less communal. I grew up in a very, very hospitality-driven, communal family and culture. Paducah, I think, has a very hospitable environment. There is still sort of old school gatherings that you would have seen like in the 90s. Even like my open house. But there are still moments where Nicholas and I are like we invite people over all the time and we feel like we don't get invited anywhere because people don't do it. And I think part of it is with us is that we have an actual equal partnership. If I had to do all of the food, decorating, and cleaning, I would not host as much. But because Nicholas takes on the food, that's a huge burden off my shoulders and so I can focus on the other aspects of the party. But if I had to do all of it, I'm not sure I would.

[00:54:55] But what I see from people is that they love it. They want it. It just feels so intimidating and it feels so overwhelming. And that strain we were talking about in the first segment is true. It's true people feel strain in lots of different ways all the time. And it's like everything else that is good for you, you don't want to do it at first. You don't want to go for the walk. You don't want to drink the glass of water. You don't want to eat the salad. You don't want to reach out to make the phone call and say I'm having a tough time. I need to talk to somebody. You don't want to host the party, but you do it and you're like, right, this is a fundamental building block of mental health and I should probably do it more. That's always how I feel about parties. Yeah, they're stressful and they're hard, but they're so worth it. It's so fun. You look around and you're like, this is it. This is the stuff that life is made of.

[00:55:51] And I'm always trying to convince people like, yeah, host the party. It doesn't matter if your floors aren't perfect. It doesn't matter if you run out of food. This is one that always worries me out. Especially like baby showers. What if we run out of food? What if you do, baby? Everybody's going to go home to their fully stocked pantry. This is America. If you run out of food it's fine. Everything's going to be fine. No one's going to go hungry. And I wish people would embrace that more because I think it's really, really life giving. And even in our hardest years, Nicholas and I (and 2024 was one of them) we're still going to host a big party. We're having a winter solstice party this weekend. I can't wait. And I just think it's so, so important.

Beth [00:56:37] And I have lowered the bar for myself in a lot of ways on what it is required to host. So I went to D.C. on Thursday and I flew up and back the same day. I left my house at 4:00 in the morning. I got home at 1:00 in the morning. So when this event rolled around on Saturday, I was exhausted and I was texting with a friend before it and she said no one would blame you one ounce if you cancel this given how busy your week has been and how exhausted you have to be. And I said exactly what you just said. It'll be good for me. Once we get here it'll be good for me. And it was. It was not my most successful event ever, and I still had a really good time. I saw some people I haven't seen in a while. I had conversations that I would not have been able to have in any other space with some of the folks who came. And I value all of that very, very much. And I appreciate that people made time for it in a busy season. I am just trying to think about what's the balance between the Priya Parker art of gathering, keep it a little bit exclusive because that's how people have the best time; and honestly, the values that my faith informs that say, no, constantly be making the table bigger, inviting more people in, welcoming people, being generous. And I'm just looking for what my trial spot for that will be next year.

Sarah [00:58:00] Yeah, I think that's really hard. I am also a person that just wants to invite everybody and often does. And I'm really thinking about some ways Nicholas and I can host people where it feels a little bit deeper and more exclusive and just dinner parties instead of huge community gatherings where we can really connect with both people we love and people we want to get to know better. Because I think it's just a balance. I think it's a balance. And the Christmas season, though, the holiday season, I think is for that. Just the big ones. Let's just blow it out. Because I think everybody wants to go. People want to be out celebrating the season. I know we all moan about how tired and stressed and overwhelmed we are and that is our God given rights as Americans, but it's my favorite time of year and I love to go to the parties and even the office parties. Listen, I even like the office party, okay? Because I just think it's really important to be together. And especially as the year comes to an end, this moment to look back and be surrounded by your community and think what you've all been through. It's the [inaudible] wow, we made it another year. I just think it's really special.

Beth [00:59:11] Well, we think it's really special that you spend time with us and listen to our episodes when so many other things are pulling at your attention. So thank you for doing that. Don't forget that if you would like a Cameo from us, a personalized video before the end of the year, we would love to make it for you. We just need to hear from you by December 19th. And I will also say that the more you tell us about yourself, the better that personalized video can be. So share your story with us by December 19th, and we will be thrilled to talk directly to you about it. We'll be back with you on Friday with a new episode reflecting on where we might be going next year. Until then, have the best week available to you.

[00:59:45] Music Interlude.

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Beth: Alise Napp is our Managing Director. Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

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