Pod Save America. Hacks on Tap. Americast. Even our own Inside Politics. You can’t throw a stick without hitting a podcast pontificating on the upcoming US presidential election, on which so much hangs. As Americans go to the polls to decide between incumbent president Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump, there’s a lot to say and all to play for.
Unsurprising, then, that the New York Times has had its own election podcast on the go for some time now. The Run-Up was first launched in 2016 in the run-up to that election, and returned to our ears in September 2022 to focus once more on the race to the top. It’s of particular interest now that we’re in something of a home stretch in a race that feels increasingly difficult to disentangle.
What marks this podcast out is in part its host, Astead W Herndon, a black millennial who grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. If you’ve been educated and also a little irritated by the whip smart repartee of the Pod Save America cohort, then Herndon is a delight. Rather than convening a panel of experts talking in wondrous wonky detail about policy details and insider wheeling and dealing, Herndon’s approach is to get out and find the people who are actually going to decide this thing.
The Run-Up released a special episode on Biden’s age and candidacy in the wake of the recent debate between the incumbent and Trump
In short, The Run-Up is less opinion and more reporting. Herndon goes into places you might not find Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau or Dan Pfeiffer. Last Thanksgiving, he went home to talk to his family, friends, parishioners from his father’s church and people he grew up with to find out whether and why black voters were losing faith in the Democratic Party. In recent weeks he has spoken to the people who interrupted a Biden campaign rally with calls for a ceasefire in Palestine. He’s spoken to vice-president Kamala Harris, independent candidate Robert Kennedy, and other high-profile political operators, yes, but the best of The Run-Up comes when Herndon talks to ordinary people.
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And, crucially, not like they are “ordinary people”, like he is bending down from his pundit perch to find out about how the hoi polloi are thinking. Herndon is respectful and curious, willing to connect with people whom you might suspect live in a US very different from his own, and has made a point of a bottom-up approach to electoral issues that makes The Run-Up particularly interesting listening.
Thus far, the podcast has taken on issues including abortion, the Middle East and the calls for ceasefire that Biden is facing, and the fallout from Trump’s felony conviction, and even released a special episode on Biden’s age and candidacy in the wake of the recent debate between the incumbent and Trump.
So yes, get your wonky fix from the myriad experts ready to explain the inside politics, but also consider this pulse-taking real talk: a lot less soap boxing and a lot more personal stakes. What makes it successful is how it eschews the broad politics sweep for a more specific look at what the people who will make this decision actually feel, and what direction many Americans, in all their instincts and individualism, might lean on November 5th.
