Processing Kamala’s Loss with Jamilah King

Hey Fam, it’s Imara. Welcome to the TransLash podcast, a show where we tell trans stories to save trans lives. Well, it’s been a difficult couple of weeks since Election Day. We now know that Republicans have won full control of Congress, and we’re starting to get a look into what Trump’s cabinet will look like, full of Christian nationalists and white supremacists. And can we just generally say the word circus springs to mind, and on the other side of the aisle, Democrats have been throwing around all kinds of explanations for what went wrong, blaming everyone from Kamala Harris to trans people and the woke left the trans one sends me into orbit every time I hear it, but all of these changes pretend a big shift in the way that historically marginalized communities are viewed and participate in American politics. So to help process what happened, I wanted to talk with someone who has not only profiled Kamala Harris, but has been a leading voice reporting on black women in politics, and that is the one, the only editorial director at Mother Jones, Jimmy le Kay. You know, you can be a really ambitious black woman with a plan, who is totally qualified to do the job, and you will not get the job. But before we get to that thoughtful conversation, let’s start out as always, with some trans joy.

The fallout from election day has been undeniably bleak, but it wasn’t all bad news that night, from the US Congress to city council boards, trans candidates up and down the ballot have won historic victories back in 2022 Joe Miller was just a law student when they decided to leave school to join the political fight against anti-LGBTQ legislation in New Jersey, just one year later, they became the state’s first openly trans person to serve in elected office after being elected to the Woodbury city council, and she’s done it again after a successful re election campaign, Joe will continue to serve on the city council, all while also serving as deputy executive director of the Camden County Democratic committee. Here’s Joe to tell us more. Every time I have like a queer kid come up to me, it reminds me why I’m doing what I do, and then I get to tell them how important it is to me that they’re existing and that they’re there. Because, you know, without them, I would have already been burned out. And, like, I had a lot of support from our trans elders, and they really put into context, like, what it looks like to organize as a community, what it looks like to continue that legacy of making things better for each generation, which is exactly why I ran for office in the first place. I’ve already had elders make my life better, and I want to do the same thing for the next generation. So I see a Sarah McBride, or I see Zoe Zephyr, like, I’m just like, yeah, all right, I can do this too. Joe Miller, you are trans joy. And do you know a person like Joe who deserves a shout-out in a future trans-Joy segment? Well, send us an email at translash_podcast@translash.org, make sure you include their name, contact info, and why you think they embody trans joy. We might use your suggestion in a future episode. You can find the email in our show notes that makes a recommendation for trans joy. And with that, let’s get to my conversation with Jamila. I’m really grateful to have the chance to process the last couple of weeks in politics with my friend Jamila King, who is the editorial director at Mother Jones. Jamila has over 15 years of experience working in media as a writer, editor, reporter, and digital strategist. She’s profiled Kamala Harris and Stacey Abrams and was a National Magazine Award finalist for her piece about housing activist Carol Fife Jamila has also served as a managing editor at BuzzFeed News and a senior staff writer at Mike where she worked on stories about everything from sexual assault to the US intervention in Haiti and that’s not All. She’s also written for two different Emmy-nominated series, showtimes. We need to talk about Bill Cosby and CNN’s United States of America. Jameela and I also started out as journalistic colleagues early in our careers at Color Lines. Jamila is no stranger to podcasts either. She’s hosted two herself and has even been a guest.

On coats, which is an episode about Kamala Harris. Hey, Jamila, thank you so much for joining us and for our special guest star and interviewee your dog, Zora, who is, you know, indefatigable and deserves to be on somebody’s billboard. Thank you so much for coming in so people may hear noise in the background, and it’s because Jameela is holding Zora, or maybe Zora is holding Jamila, I don’t know. Thank you for having me, Amara. It’s so great to be here, although you kind of didn’t have a choice, because I know how to find you. So you do. You know all my numbers. You know, you know, you know, but you also know to get me at home. So that’s right, that’s right. First off, I’m wondering how you are conceptualizing what in the world happened if you are conceptualizing what in the world happening? I’m not asking you. I’m not going to ask you how you feel, or what your take is, or whatever because all of that is whatever it is. But literally, like, how are you just even getting a frame around what we just experienced? To be honest? Amara, I’m not. I am. I was really surprised by my reaction. I’ll be really candid, because I think there’s a part of me that, leading up to the election, had my sort of, you know, regular cynicism about power in the US, but I was fundamentally hopeful. And I think that since the election, I’m just like, wow, there are people in this country who do not care about me. But beyond that, like, there, there’s so much about this country I don’t understand. And so I’m trying to figure out if my optimism is like a quintessentially African American sort of trait, right? Like black folks generally think good of this country, until we don’t, you know, and you and I have talked about that a lot too, yeah, I think, I mean, I have a question, though, is it that you don’t understand this country or you don’t want to accept what you actually yeah, I think that is what I’m struggling with. I think I am someone who I want to say, like, oh, you know, I’m not. I’ve read all the things, you know, I have the political but like, I think at my core, I want to be a hopeful person. And I think we were getting a lot of these messages before the election that, you know, Kamala had done this record amount of fundraising, and you know, that made me feel really hopeful. But then again, I am, I am in my little bubble. And yeah, that that enthusiasm was probably a coping mechanism for me, because, like, you know, I know this country ain’t shit, and I know that we as a country, I could feel the right word shift right even in my own family circles, I can feel the culture shift.

And so there’s a part of me that’s that surprised, a part of me that’s not surprised at all. I think for me, what I continue to just accept is that so many of the things that the country says that it cares about and that are essential to its character are essentially not true, and that those measures that our country has are essentially just for certain types of people. So, you know, as I told somebody, I was, like, given what America says that it cares about and its leaders, if you had a race between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon, like, let’s say Richard Nixon from like, 1968 could be suddenly catapulted to this time. Like, the whole country should be voting for Nixon. Like, like, like, in a really weird way, right? But I think Trump would, Trump would still win, right? I think that Nixon represents this old school Republicanism that just does not exist anymore. Yeah. But I’m saying, even with character flaw, I’m saying like, you know, like the most flawed person to ever occupy the presidency, besides Donald Trump, the only person to have been impeached successfully, where it led them to resign, even though they never stood trial, was Nixon. So even if you were to bring the person who like, historically, is acknowledged as the most flawed person to ever occupy the presidency the whole country, like, even if you were progressive, you should be like, I’m voting for Richard Nixon, right? Yeah. But like, because on every single thing, we say that we don’t like liars. There’s a liar. We say that we don’t like people who are rapists and sexual assaulters. Well, throw that out the window. We say that we don’t like convective felons. Okay? We say that we don’t like people who cheat other people. Okay, that’s out. Like, literally, when you go down the list, like, of all of the things that we say that we care about in people right? With Donald Trump, none of that mattered, and what he promised was grievance and rage. And people were like, here’s the matchbox. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So yeah. I mean, I think that you’re right. There are parts of this that I’m not.

Not surprised. I think America shows itself. But I think the way that this has happened, it’s almost like the Republican Party has, in a weird way, become the Populist Party, right, like the party of the people, quote, unquote, which is really scary, which is really, really scary. But I do think that there’s something deep about class that isn’t really, maybe I shouldn’t limit it to class, but I definitely think there’s something about like feeling like an outsider, right? Yeah, like in my family, for instance, there are folks who feel like COVID really made them feel like an outsider and gave them an identity that they didn’t quite have before. You know, I really think that this is about rage, and I know that that’s not popular, but I really think it’s about rage. I think that something about the lockdown and something about the idea of collectivity made people very angry, and the society has decoupled itself from thinking about acting in solidarity or in concert with other people, that consumerism has become people’s identities in which you believe that everything is supposed to adapt to what you want and how you want and when you need it, and that anything that denies that feels like oppression and feels like a dismissal, yeah,

yeah. And I think that I kind of got that from the fact that when I was on a plane, when the mask ban was lifted by court order that everybody started cheering, yeah, and that freaked me out, because, you know, a million people had died, and people were more concerned about their ability to do what they wanted than the fact that their grandma, their neighbor, their teacher, had died and that there were still vulnerable people who we Should, maybe should wear masks for them. Just went out the window. Yeah? And I think that it tapped into a rage. And I think that he gives voice and legitimacy to rage that is really powerful, especially in a patriarchal society, when the patriarchy feels under threat. Yeah. I mean, I’m sorry, that’s where I’ve been. I’ve been sitting in that stew and trying to even give myself the space and time to just think and reflect and figure out what is my role moving forward, right? Yeah, what does the work look like in my lane, moving forward in our lives? Yeah.

Do you have a lot of insights into our current vice president, Kamala Harris. Yes, knowing her, I mean, I kept wondering this, and I I’ve never met her, etc, but how knowing her, do you think she reacted to the defeat? Because the next day she came out, you know, looking very pulled together in AKA, we’ve seen her, and a couple of times saw her, yeah, Veterans Day, you know, looking again, pulled together, buttoned up, not letting it show, or people see sweat, just seemed to take it all in her stride. Do you think that that’s what is the reality like? How do you think knowing the character of her. Do you think that she Yeah, so I followed Kamala Harris for many years and reported on her quite a bit. And you’re from the bay, and I’m from the Bay,

I think part of her is very relieved that she’s not President. The campaign seemed like a really, really difficult sprint. But you know, I think there is, I think there she’s been so close to power for so long that it must to have come this far, right? It’s kind of like, well, what does her political career look like at the end of this? I don’t think she was a perfect candidate. I think that she had plenty of flaws. I think those flaws were very much, you know, amped up by the right, but she didn’t have a lot of enthusiasm on the left. And I think that, you know, Bernie is somebody who had a lot of enthusiasm for a little while on the left. And I’m thinking of his name, because that name came up in conversation recently, specifically in relation to her not going on, Joe Rogan, right? So the whole thing was, like, she really missed an opportunity. She didn’t go on Joe Rogan. Bernie went on Rogan. I’m like, Okay, anyway, I just think that she’s probably taking it in stride, probably a little bit of relief, but she was also that much closer to power. She was about to make history in ways that, you know, we got excited about dreaming about, right? Like, imagine having an election night party at Howard University when an alumni becomes president, right? Incredible. But, yeah, that’s that didn’t happen. Let’s turn to her a little bit more. How much do you think she really wanted to be president? I mean, you know, like everyone says, There’s a joke in Washington that every person who’s a senator thinks that they could be president. Of course, she ran for the presidency. Many people throughout her career said, Oh, you’re going to be the first.

First black woman president, or even the first woman president, it was said to her, like, for years, right? That was, like, the thing that everyone in California knew, yeah. But I’m wondering, do you think that that was, like, literally her dream, or the dream she thought she should fulfill? Like, do you have any insights into that? I’m just curious. I think Kamala Harris sees her life outside of politics too. I think there was sort of a bittersweetness to a lot of this that I noticed there’s just something about the way that she talks about food where it’s like, you can really see that she would rather she talks about food like, I think that is actually her passion. And there was a moment on the campaign trail where someone asked her, like, what would be her dream? And she’s like, when I retire, I just want to open up a restaurant, you know, I think she might have said in the hills of Jamaica, and like, you know, whatever we have fresh that day, and then once we serve all of it, we’re done, and we close. And there was like a serenity in her when she was talking about that. Maybe that’s just my Bay Area projection, but I also have a hard time answering this question without looking at myself like, I think being President of the United States is a terrible job. Like, I think it is a really, really hard job. You have to be a certain type of person who wants that job. You know, more than anything, more than anything, more than anything else, right? More than and I think that’s the key part. I think there are previous Democratic nominees who definitely wanted it more than anything else, yeah, no, you day in, day out, it’s what you have to want to do more than anything else. It has to be your number one priority. Yeah, on this issue of her flaws, she was flawed, but, I mean, she was, you know, a better than average politician, which means that she had a lot of flaws, but a lot of strengths, and none of it was disqualifying, yeah, like she was better than Nixon. And if Nixon had run, we should all have been voted for Richard Nixon, right? Like she definitely is better than Richard Nixon. I just think that honestly, and as a person who has no problem saying things about politicians, I don’t honestly think that given all the constraints that any other politician could have done that much better, like if you had dealt the same hand. I think the only difference that would be different is that she would be a man, yeah, and that might have actually been enough to get her over the hump, given who broke for Trump in the last day or so and gave him the edge, young men. But I just don’t think that if someone else had to come in at the last minute. You inherited a war, you know, all the things, yeah. I mean, the question of this men, you know, that’s one of the more heartbreaking parts of the election for me, is and not surprising at all, but just the level of deep misogyny that is running through our country, and such a reaction, you know, to things like me too and say her name, like my body, my choice, Yeah, crazy, reduced rage, apparently, yeah, yeah. Let’s talk about that, something that you’ve written a lot about, which is race and gender in America, like, on some level, given the history of the country, is it a surprise that people did not want to see a black woman occupy the highest office in the land? Like, what do you think? Does it say anything that we didn’t know beforehand? Or what would you say about that piece? You know, I think that we saw something of this in Georgia in 2020 when Stacey Abrams lost her second race, she built this infrastructure. I mean, she’d arguably done a bit more foundational work than Kamala. But, you know, you can be a really ambitious black woman with a plan who is totally qualified to do the job, and you will not get the job, you know. And so I think that, you know, I think black women are, once again, in a position in this country where we’re at, like, you know, you have to, like, prove your patriotism, right? You labor so. And we’ve seen for years that black women have long been this the block of support for the Democratic Party, and it’s our cousins and uncles and you know, like these are the people who, in some cases, voted for Trump. I just the backlash that we’ve seen already toward black women, specifically the gender more broadly, right? The backlash that we’re seeing is not new. That is something that has existed for many, many millennials, like Claudine, gay, you know, who was president of Harvard, who, that’s a great example. Who was, you know, drummed out by a billionaire of office. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, isn’t it started the year with that, for example. The other thing is about Stacey Abrams that I think is a really important note here is that she and Senator Raphael Warnock ran in 2022 she is the governor. He a senator, and he got more votes than she did, and she lost. And the main difference between Stacey Abrams and.

Raphael Warnock is that Raphael Warnock is a man. He’s a black man. He’s a man. And Stacey Abrams lost that race, yeah. How do you contextualize, though, the fact that there are now two black women senators that are going to be in the US Senate? Yeah? I mean that that’s historic. I think that’s a huge accomplishment that’s going to get that hasn’t gotten talked enough about never happened before. Has never happened before. America is still yet to have a black woman governor. So I think there potentially are some ministerial races coming up that we should keep our eyes on. And you know, I just, I can’t I think back to when Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris, right? And here’s where you see, like the DNA of the safety Abrams campaign and the combo campaign come together in a very real way, which is, you know, he promised to have a black woman running mate, right? So, yeah. So you have that moment, which itself was such a weird, like, you never want your boss to be like, I am gonna hire a black person in this position. It’s such a like, weird, warped way that Democrats of his era think about what equity is. It’s like the complete wrong way of doing equity and inclusion, right, but this is the easy, adaptable way she was set up to fail, I think, in many ways. And, you know, I think she must know that and see that on some level, right, like these are not the optimal conditions in which we get our first black female president. And so to me, I think it speaks to a structural, a deep set of structural issues in the Democratic Party, a deep set of like, who is the leadership that we have cultivated? And we have, I think, on the state level, but federally, like, what is the leadership that the party has cultivated that is representative and part of, like, an actual plan, you know, what is our statement? I think Democrats are so clear about, like, not having allegiances necessarily, but like, if the alternate version of this is the conservative sort of agenda to, you know, one day overturn Roe versus Wade, what is our long term goal? And I’m curious to see who in the Democratic Party is grappling with that question right now. So one of the things that I hear underneath, kind of all your answers and and what’s coming across in terms of where you are, is that underneath it all is despair.

I mean, there’s a despair, but also there’s the cynical part of me that’s like, well, here we go again, you know, and we’ve done this before. Black people, trans people, are always facing a backlash of some kind, and so we are uniquely built for this moment, you know? We are built for a moment in which nothing is guaranteed and people have to, like, literally work toward their survival and, like name work for their bodily autonomy. I think there, there’s histories, and there’s lineages for us to fall back on that can make this a potentially really galvanizing moment.

But I still personally feel a lot of despair.

One of the things that worries me, though, is that, like, one of the things that’s a reality is that American history as it actually happened, hasn’t been taught, and so those other moments, I think, are erased from a lot of people’s memories intentionally. I think the second thing is that we may be prepared for the idea of resistance, but the lived reality of the full weight of the state coming after people is something that even we didn’t feel universally, we felt universally now, but universally during the first Trump administration. And I think that I was struggling with this, and I was like, Well, who has felt that who grew up in the United States? I think the last group of people who remember what that was like are essentially the people that would be my parents, people who were born in the late 40s and in the 50s. Remember what it was like to live under an authoritarian apartheid regime in the south, where like, people who knew people or had heard about or read about lynchings, people who knew what actual discrimination was like. People who knew what it was like when you didn’t walk out of a store with a receipt, and the cops were there waiting for you and asked for your receipt, and if they did and they sent you to jail, like, like that type of very up close and personal contact with state power that they weren’t really able to organize in 2016 but what you can see in Project 2025 is a plan to do so, yeah, I think you’re right. I think that you know, people who are our parents generation have felt that. But I also think there’s levels of state repression that have existed in pockets that are just going to become 100% totally regularized, right? So I for some reason, while you were talking, I was thinking about gang injunctions, right? And these are sets of policies in that a lot of cities, including San Francisco and Kamala Harris was District Attorney, gang injunctions were sort of policy wise. They were a way to cut down on violence, but was with.

Were in practice, were legal orders keeping people away from their neighborhoods, essentially, right? So you would be banned from being in a certain vicinity. If you could be in that vicinity, then you would be arrested. That sort of interaction with state power, I think, has been happening for a while, but you’re right. I mean, it’s a very different scenario. And I wonder, with the level of repression that’s happening, are we standing on firm enough brown historically, to like organize? That’s, I don’t know. That’s where my again, that’s where my optimism kind of comes in. Because I do think that the most creative culture and the most creative like organizing, happens in moments of intense despair and, you know, political retribution, that’s right, you know. So I’m curious to see what that’s going to look like. And I hate to sound like an elder here, but you know, that’s my true my true identity, which is that, you know, like I’m excited to see what young people do right now. I’m excited to see what people who came of age in a Trump presidency? Do when they’re old enough to create or to build? I’m just, I don’t know what that, you know, I grew up thinking about. You know, George Bush is the worst Republican president we’re ever going to see right here, like they’re saying the quiet parts out loud. And so what is our reaction going to be? What is the reaction our community is going to be to that? Yeah, I think the thing is that it’s going to it’ll take everybody though when you’re facing something like this, yeah, my last question is, how are you thinking about taking care of yourself in this moment? Because you have an important job as a leader at a progressive news organization, which is going to have to be producing and grappling with pieces that focus on some of the worst things that are going to happen. Yeah, and at the same time are a black and queer person who is at the intersection of a lot of affected communities that are going to be ensnared in what’s coming. So I’m just wondering, like, have you thought about that? Maybe it’s unfair to say, what are you going to do? I mean, have you thought about it? Yeah, I don’t. I don’t know what my role and I’m grappling with that a lot in terms of what my what my role is. I’m going to be teaching a class next semester, and so I’m thinking, I’m thinking a lot about what it means to decenter yourself in the work and create spaces for people to, like, latch on to this thing that you take for granted. So for me, that’s been journalism, right? It’s like, I think the one answer for me would be, and has in my career been, I am going to, you know, report the hell out of XYZ. There is a place for that. Absolutely, for me right now, it’s like, how do I create the conditions where people can report XYZ? And so that’s what I’m thinking a lot about. I think one of the interesting things to note on something like an election night is, you know, like seeing people in news organizations who, you know, don’t get the shine, but really like stepping up, you know, whether it’s audience or whatever, like, really, just like doing their thing, committing to their work. I think there’s a space for that. For sure, it’s important to cultivate a space for that, but I also know that I’ve set a good example, and I have to literally take care of myself, so I’m trying to allow myself to grieve. That is what that means for me right now, and I don’t, and that looks different day to day, but it just means taking the pressure off, making sure I’m calling folks, checking in with folks, trying to hold people close who mean something to me. And, yeah, giving myself space. So that’s another part of it for me. Yeah, absolutely, I feel the exact same way.

And I think that also a part of it for me is just understanding how important our job as non mainstream journalist is in this moment because of the utter failure of our profession on so many levels, like, part of the way that we got here was because of the massive mainstream failures, you know, and the fact that we even see that right now when we have supposedly even progressive outlets blame trans People for Kamala Harris’s loss, yeah, which is just absolute malpractice, and is an utter disservice, and is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to be doing in this job. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s deeply shocking to me just how bad that malpractice is, and it utterly just underscores how important our role is as non mainstream journalists is in this moment, and a part of that is taking care of ourselves so that we can do the job. Agree? And I think, yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m excited to really think about how to build and to be, you know, we are, oftentimes the rare voice.

In a room that might counter something. So I think that’s important too, but absolutely the role of independent media, the role of media that has long been a haven for folks whose ideas are outside of the ordinary, right? So yeah, I think about that a lot, and I’m really excited to do that work eventually, but in the short term, I will be literally just trying to allow myself to grieve. Well, I think that that’s really important, because I’ve been telling, as many people who will listen is that the easy part is right now, like the easiest part that we’re going to experience for many, many years is the next two months, and then after then it’s off to the races for the foreseeable future where there won’t be a let up. So I think that finding a way to pace yourself, and I hope that everybody listening takes this to heart as well. Give yourself some space over the next two months to really ground and to restore and to reorient because after January 20, that’s gonna become really hard.

Well. Jameela, thank you so much for joining us and for taking the time out of both running a newsroom and grieving and imagining what the future might be to talk to us about how you’re processing this election, I think you probably captured the mood of a lot of people listening. Really appreciate it. Well, thank you for having me and you know. Thank you for your work and your space conference. Thank you so much. That was journalist Jameela Kane.

Thank you for joining me on the translash podcast. Now listen all the way through to the end of the show for something extra, but first special, thanks to Dr d k2 for giving us a five star review on Apple podcast. Dr d k2 says project 2025. Calls for the extermination of trans people, so your existence is an act of resistance, and I deeply thank you. But as the mother of my trans son and a very politically active Democrat, I’m very disappointed in the Harris campaign and DNC for missing a huge opportunity to stand for trans rights. There are brave, articulate kids speaking out for their rights in state legislatures, and these kids should have been given a national platform, at the DNC, at rallies, on ads, and I truly believe that they would have won over the hearts and minds of most American people. I’m not saying this would have changed the outcome of the election, but it could have protected trans rights and trans lives. Thank you for your fight. And dr, d k2 thank you so much for this heartfelt message, and if you want to help support the show, go ahead and leave your five star review on Apple podcasts like Dr DK two you might just hear it on the show. The translash podcast is produced by translash Media. The translash team includes Oliver ash Klein and Arby Calloway. Sander Adams is our senior sound engineer and a contributing producer. This episode was engineered by Lucy little. The music you heard was composed by Ben Draghi and also courtesy of ZZ K records. The translash podcast is made possible by the support of foundations and listeners like you. You this week? Well, I am looking forward to, I already mentioned Facing Race in the last episode, so that’s going to be great. But I am also looking forward to Thanksgiving, which is next week, because we all so desperately need it. We need time to reconnect with ourselves, with people that we love, that people who are around us. If you are not celebrating with your family, then I hope that you are celebrating with people that you love and you care about. And if that’s not possible, I hope that you are spending time with yourself, resting, if you can, and if you cannot, just giving thanks for your breath and the fact that you are here. We are glad that you are here. We are glad that everyone is here, and we want everyone to be taking care of themselves as we move through this really difficult and heart wrenching time. Please be looking after each other. If there are people that you know are going to be alone on Thanksgiving, please find a way to reach out to them and see if they might want to connect. So that’s what I’m looking forward to you.