Oct 29, 2024

What up, Recast fam. On today’s agenda:

One week before Election Day, we step back to examine polarization and a path forward post-2024
Donald Trump has a serious Puerto Rico problem in battleground Pennsylvania
And an NAACP poll found Trump is slowly losing support among Black men

Photo illustration of torn-paper edge on picture of mural with workers that reads "Built with pride to move the world."

A new documentary focuses on residents in cities experiencing dramatic changes in a globalized, post-industrial environment. | POLITICO illustration/Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures

What is the “American identity”? Is it even possible for this shared sense of identity to exist in a polarized America?

These are the questions James Kicklighter and Guy Tal Seemann set out to explore eight years ago after working on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, worried about how heated the political discourse had become.

In many ways, that year was a turning point: Donald Trump’s rise turned already deep political divides between the two major parties into near-chasms. Tensions between rural and coastal America came to the forefront. And people within the same local communities started battling each other.

Kicklighter and Seemann crisscrossed the country, hitting several Coal and Rust Belt towns to understand just how much partisanship, globalization and demographic shifts are affecting them — and whether there’s any way out of the “us versus them” mentality. They talked to residents, community organizers, business owners and high school students. They revisited towns and interviewees years later, documenting any changes in perspectives.

And today, they released a documentary — directed by Kicklighter and narrated by Seemann — called “The American Question,” which shares lessons on building mutual respect and trust that reverberate today with the polarization we’re still facing.

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Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center found that registered voters remain evenly divided in their political affiliations, even as the Republican and Democratic parties have grown further apart on their beliefs and general demographic makeup. Just one week out from the 2024 election, Kamala Harris and Trump are locked in a dead heat, fighting to sway a very small slice of undecided voters.

“No matter what happens with the election, half of the country is going to feel like the country has come to an end. Because of that existential crisis, that means we have more work to do than ever,” Kicklighter told The Recast.

We sat down with the two documentary makers to discuss their findings, what has left them optimistic — and the future post-2024.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

THE RECAST: In the eight years that you spent making this film, how have you found our sense of collective American identity changed? Did it ever exist?

KICKLIGHTER: Many people like to cite after World War II as being a time where America was very unified and integrated — but at the same time, we tend to forget things like racism, discrimination, things that we like to not talk about very much.

And so I think the story of America has always been the identity that we weave for ourselves, while also sometimes ignoring the factors that are not so pleasant.

What we're seeing with the rise of new media — with social media permeating our landscape — is ... now everyone has the ability to speak their truths. It’s becoming more challenging to have a national identity, because we're grappling with all these different microcosms. There are voices that have never been heard before; they're being heard for the first time. But then there are groups that have led the country for a long time that are grappling with what their responsibility might be in the social injustices that we are experiencing.

Quote from James Kicklighter, director, "The American Question," reads "The Story of America has always been the identity that we weave for ourselves, while also sometimes ignoring the factors that are not so pleasant."

SEEMANN: The reason why [America] was so successful is because the founders were able to create ... a sense of glue around the values written out in the Constitution. And we're talking about, like, life, liberty and property. We're talking about the definition by Benjamin Franklin on the American dream. ... It really is the only thing that connects everyone from Maine to Texas to Alaska, these kinds of core values.

However, when you go locally to individual places, you start to see the lack of identity, or the feeling of, "What is my place here in America? ... I don't see where I can bring value. I don't see where I am able to do hard work. I don't see where I can buy property" or even "I feel my liberties are being taken away."

So people's individual identities in their local regions — this is the division we see.

THE RECAST: One of the places you stopped in, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, is somewhere with a once-dominant industry that's now waning and it has seen a pretty rapid growth in the Latino population. What can it tell us about the rest of the country?

KICKLIGHTER: The thing that we forget is that this is actually the story of America. Once upon a time in Hazleton, many of those immigrants were Italian Americans that did not speak English. And so today, when we see Hazleton having the same thing happen with Spanish speakers, they're going through the same thing that happened 100 years ago.

So what does that mean for Hazleton and communities like Hazleton? You have a choice. You can choose to integrate the new population in ways that can help your community, that can revitalize it, or you can start war. And the thing that I loved about Hazleton is that there is an effort to try to make the community a better place through the Hazleton Integration Project.

Film still shows skyline of Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

Hazleton, a city in Pennsylvania's bellwether Luzerne County, saw a rapid demographic shift fueled by an influx of Latino immigrants in recent decades. | Film still courtesy of Gravitas Ventures

SEEMANN: What is critical about Hazleton and Erie and most importantly Detroit, was the resiliency of the people and the grit and the desire to actually want to build back better, not to stay stuck in their polarization and in their sides.

THE RECAST: Nationally, is there a path out of this “us versus them” mentality that's developed over the last few decades?

KICKLIGHTER: If you want to start to solve this problem nationally, you have to be able to fix this problem locally. One thing that amuses me when people talk about politics is they say how Washington is broken and people aren't working for us — but everyone that goes to Washington are elected officials from local places, and if it's that dysfunctional in Washington, D.C, that means it's a microcosm of what's happening back at home.

SEEMANN: There is a whole other slew of things that we need to be doing. One is the reintroduction of civics classes, which was more or less removed in the '60s and '70s. And ... [we need] leaders who are willing to be courageous and visionary and even, most importantly, self-sacrificing sometimes.

KICKLIGHTER: My favorite word on social media these days is when people use "they." When we assign "they are doing" that removes all culpability from "me." I think that something we really do need to work on ... asking ourselves why and what role we play in all of this.

THE RECAST: Looking forward, what effect will the 2024 election have on the American identity and the questions that you explored in the film?

KICKLIGHTER: No matter what happens with the election, half of the country is going to feel like the country has come to an end. Because of that existential crisis, that means we have more work to do than ever. ... And for whichever side of the election wins, I think it's really imperative that that side does work to reach out to the other side.

Without that kind of dialogue, we're only going to send people further into mistrust, suspicion and further escalation of polarization.

Trump supporters watch Madison Square Garden rally.

Trump supporters watch his Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday in New York City. | Yuki Iwamura/AP

SEEMANN: The data shows it might be the first time in 30 or 40 years where civic communal engagement is actually ticking back up due to the election animosity and division that elections bring about every time.

I think we're starting to see the exhausted center slowly start to wake up and say, "OK, I probably can't count on my corporate leaders, my political leaders, even my communal or social leaders, as much as I used to. What can I do about this?"

THE RECAST: Of all the places in the country that you visited, in all the conversations you had, what stood out to you as the most striking or surprising thing?

KICKLIGHTER: The most striking and perhaps hopeful narrative was from an Iraqi refugee … who came to the United States in distress from what was happening in Iraq, where he could not live safely with his family anymore. Over the course of filming, he goes from not speaking any English to not having a job to not having a bank account to living in a basement to having a home being a contractor and being able to speak with us in our final interview in English, while his wife and child grow up together with him.

SEEMANN: For me it was when we were speaking to Joe, a gym owner in Erie. I disagree with him on literally every single policy position you can possibly imagine, right? But at that moment, hearing where a person comes from, [what] changed their lives so much that got them to believe what they believe today, that creates a lot of empathy and understanding.

PENNSYLVANIA’S PUERTO RICANS ARE PISSED

People walk past campaign signs for the Harris-Walz presidential ticket in north Philadelphia.

People walk past campaign signs for the Harris-Walz presidential ticket in north Philadelphia, Oct. 28, 2024. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

Many Puerto Ricans are furious about racist and demeaning comments made at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally over the weekend.

Their dismay just might give Harris an opening to win over the nearly half a million voters of Puerto Rican descent in Pennsylvania — a state that could swing the entire election in her favor, as our Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy and Holly Otterbein report.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Trump. Almost a week before Election Day, he’s pushing to cut into Harris’ margins among Latinos. But Sunday’s comments from pro-Trump comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” has reverberated across the country, prompting even the former president’s Republican allies to defend the island and denounce the comments.

And it casts a shadow over Trump’s rally later today, when he plans to speak from Allentown, Pennsylvania, a majority-Latino city that boasts one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in the state.

“It’s not the smartest thing to do, to insult people — a large group of voters here in a swing state — and then go to their home asking for votes,” said Norberto Dominguez , a precinct captain with the local Democratic Party in Allentown, who noted his own family is split between the two parties.

“This was just like a gift from the gods,” said Victor Martinez, an Allentown resident who owns the Spanish-language radio station La Mega, noting some Puerto Rican voters in the area have been on the fence about voting at all. “If we weren’t engaged before, we’re all paying attention now.”

In response to questions on the comments, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “Due to President Trump’s plans to cut taxes, end inflation, and stop the surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border, he has more support from the Hispanic American community than any Republican in recent history.”

TRUMP LOSES GROUND WITH BLACK MEN

A man who identified himself as "Red Pill Ken" is seen before a rally with former President Donald Trump.

A man who identified himself as "Red Pill Ken" is seen before a rally with former President Donald Trump at Santander Arena in Reading, Pennsylvania, Oct. 9, 2024. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

A new poll from the NAACP tries to shed light on whether Black men are truly shifting away from the Democratic Party. Their answer? Not so fast.

It’s actually Trump who is losing standing among this coveted voting bloc, as Brakkton Booker reports. Some of the key findings:

Twenty-one percent of Black men under 50 support Trump — a drop from the 27 percent who said they back him in last month’s NAACP survey.

Conversely, Harris’ support among this bloc jumped from 51 percent to 59 percent over that same time frame.

Still: Even though Harris’ support among Black voters overall has jumped 10 percentage points from last month’s poll, it’s still lower (at 73 percent) than what Joe Biden got in 2020 (roughly 90 percent) and Barack Obama got in 2012 and 2008 (roughly 95 percent).

The NAACP poll surveyed 1,000 Black respondents and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.