country had survived. >> we have time for a couple of questions. are you aware of any decision with the notes either mentioned before support of the decision? [inaudible] >> supreme court -- for most of its history has been careful not to cite directly to the notes, but they tend to cite to the federalist papers which were written by madison and hamilton during this time when they were very close. so i don't think that this book is going to change specific issues but what i do think it will do is that people that believe on this may have some

original is on that is sometimes good. it is not the idea that you lose history and constitutional interpretation. but original is on is the claim that the only legitimate way to read the constitution is what people in 1787 that wrote the document were people that ratified it thereafter thought what the constitution meant and that no other meetings are acceptable. and so i think for that the people the sense of how difficult it was even at the moment for people to understand what the constitution was, and at that moment, will be a little bit complicated. >> coming back to my original question about madison who oftentimes thought he was bowed father of politicians. if you look at what he did in terms of trying to change them a little bit to reflect his

evolving views, is it fair to think of them? is the father of the constitution? >> the thing i came away from his how important this is. not the objective record but as a way for us to understand how difficult it was that they faced. i came away with enormous respect for how close the country was falling apart and how much different people with different opinions try to double to hold it together and how remarkable the document was that was written in philadelphia. and how different it looks to us. and this is not the document that they thought that they were writing. the fact they ended up playing cards would be a great surprise to all of them.

>> we will see the life-size models for how short james madison was which could be a real victory for short people. and the book will be on sale on the library outside. i want to thank mary for sharing this information with us. >> thank you for having me. [cheers] [applause] >> booktv is in prime time on c-span2 starting on monday night at 8:30 p.m. eastern. each night we will feature a series of programs on topics ranging from politics and education to medical care and national security. plus encore presentations from recent book decibels. tune in for booktv in prime time all next week on c-span2. go to booktv.org for the complete schedule. ♪

>> for this year's studentcam contest, students talk about issues that they want the candidates to discuss during the 2016th presidential campaign. equality, education, and immigration were all top issues. thank you to all of the students and teachers they competed. every weekday in april starting on the first, one of the top 21 winning entries will air at 6:50 a.m. eastern on c-span. all of the winning entries are available for viewing online at studentcam.org. >> when i tune into the weekend usually it is authors sharing new releases. >> on c-span they can have a longer conversation than delve into the subjects. >> booktv weekend brings you author after author that spotlights the work of

fascinating people. >> ila booktv and i am a c-span fan. >> welcome to the eighth annual tucson festival of books. one of the largest book festivals in the country and i am glad to see such a good crowd.d there must be a lot of political junkies in the room. and so i want to thank c-span which is actually broadcasting this panel live as we speak. also booktv and cox communications for sponsorship of the venue.il the presentation will last about one hour and the last 15 or 20 minutes we will preserve for

questions and answers to our panel. your and we ask you to hold your questions until the end and we will make sure that we give that full 20 minutes to questions. and right after the session everyone will be available to sign books. you go to the bookstore tent, number 153, which is sponsored by the university of arizona bookstore. the books, as i said, are going to be available at that location. if you are wanting to meet all of the panelists and just so you know that samara klar will be doing an interview immediately following the session and she will be a little bit late. but hold on because she will be there in due course.ave but i assume that you are all enjoying the festival.

it is one of the real pleasures that we have in the city of tucson and i just want to it knowledge that bill was here a minute ago. and there he is right there. and bill and brenda urges thends critical players in making this happen with lots of volunteers and we've knowledge the great work that they have done. because you are here and i hope you are enjoying the session and the whole event, that you will be a member of the friends of the festival program and you can make a tax-deductible donation free of charge to the public. >> the donald trump calling you. >> he heard that we were having

a civil discussion. >> you know, it happens. >> unlike "meet the press", we are going to go along with the schedule program. [laughter] okay, now i am good.ti [laughter] and let me finish about the friends of the festival program. if you make a tax-deductible donation will allow them to continue without charging the public. as you know they donate literally thousands and thousands of dollars every year to local charities and that is another reason to hopefully donate.ere you so to do so and become a friend in person you can go to this area where you can go to the website for the festival. so now the warning that i should have given myself. out of respect for everyone,

please turn off your cell phones and turn off your phone entirely for the duration. so now it is my pleasure to introduce our panelists. i'm going to the journalist fellow at the nation institute, ari berman, he has written articles in a variety of outlets where the magazine, rolling stone is also zero times as you may have heard him on npr today so he has contributed to both msnbc and npr.ck until seated next to him is john nichols who is coming back to the festival. he was here last year and i was able to moderate on his panel ae well. m

he is a correspondent reporter writer with many publications on the one we will be outstanding t is that this is a very provocative book about where wee are. assist in the last is samara klar who is an assistant professor at the university of arizona at the college that i graduated from. and it was a time of great being excitement here and it was particularly exciting. she will be one of our three panelists today. so a little at about the books. a book written by john and also robert. and it talks about where we are in our democracy and where the

economy of our country is goingr and where it's taking us. and we will take steps to change the way the system works and the economy works, the political system and the way it is driven. his book, give us the ballot. "give use the ballot: the modern struggle for voting rights in america." i love john's book and i love samara klar as well. and i love what happened after, before and after the votingas rights act was enacted back in 1965 when lbj was president. it is a history that i had never really heard or learned before. it's one of the most incredible people that you could ever meet.

and this includes the importance of their work and also what hase been happening to the voter act since 1965 and that is an important issue for us knowing that we have states across the country where these votingou rights will be enacted. so i want to welcome you all and i want to pose the first question to you to our panelists. so thank you. independent politics.

the subtitle is how americans fe disdain for parties leads to political inaction. "independent politics: how american disdain for parties leads to political inaction." there is a wide range of views. and what that means for the view of the the political discourse and political action in oure country.scribe and the embarrassment as she described the people have to be. described as partisan and how that plays out with how people actually vote. so we thank you. so we asked him to give you a very brief overview and giving each panelist and turn the ability to do the same areas when they talk about what is

going on in our country right now it is an extraordinarily challenging and different kind of election period. i was telling samara klar thati in the politics of my youth i had never seen anything like it. it is pretty incredible what is going on. so i would like the panelists to discuss how the theme or for perspective -- what it says about where we are in this election. j >> binky so much for that kind introduction and it is great to be on this panel. so i have to get everything ande now. u but it's really great. [laughter] >> thank you all for sticking it out. many of you have been here and this is my first visit to tucson. i enjoy the hiking in the tacos

and everything else are you it'e been really nice to be here. my book, as ron has mentioned, was a history of voting rights since 1965. everything that came after this was the most important piece ofs civil rights legislation of the 1960s. i really began covering the issue after the 2010 election when many states flipped from blue to red or became a lot more red. we begin to see a wave of new voting restrictions in things like making it harder to register to vote, cutting back on early voting, were hiredse strick forms of id that you never needed in any previous election. disenfranchising people, half the states in the country past new voting restrictions after the 2010 election and it wasn't really getting any coverage. so i became the first national reporter to cover this first rolling stone and then for the nation magazine and i really covered this issue all the way through the 2012 election.

hi one in florida because. [inaudible] we saw a six-hour line ont election day in 2012 and president obama when he was reelected said that we have to fix that. what happened after the 2012 election is the supreme court struck down a key part of the voting rights act it was the centerpiece but said that those states were the longest histories of voting discrimination and had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. that part of the law blocked 3000 discriminatory voting changes from taking effect from 1965 through 2013. it was an extremely important part of the most important civil rights law of the 1960s. it was at that point that i really decided i wanted to write my book. because i knew that this wasn't just history were telling the stories about people like john

lewis. as remarkable as they are, it's about the people were living d there. he said he felt like history was repeating himself and that he was fighting for things that he thought that he had 15 decades later. just to talk about where we are in 2016, this is very relevant to my book. the 2016 election of the first presidential election in 50 years without the fullll protection of the voting rightss act. this is the first presidential election since the supreme court gutted the voting rights act. sixteen states now have new voting restrictions in place foi the first time. very important swing states like wisconsin and ohio and north carolina and virginia. so i know that there has been so much coverage in the media over who people are going to vote for and what the polls are going to say. a i'm v i have been asking a different question which is will every d

eligible voter he able to cast a ballot. i'm concerned that they will not be able to. so when you talk about the o direction of our we and the theme of this panel, i don't think you can talk about itig without talking about what is going on with voting rights and what is happening to the voting rights act. the last thing i will say is that there have been 20 presidential debates and the issue of voting rights has not come up. and i think that that is a 2 national tragedy because i don't believe this is a fringe issue worries tied issue, i believe that this is one of the most fundamental issues in the 2016 election and regardless if you are a democrat or an independent or a republican, you should be committed to seeing that everyone will once to vote and they should be able to in 2016.t [applause]g means for >> let's ask john the same question about your book and what it means, what it means fo- the 2016 presidential election.

>> first law if you don't have these books, get them. >> so your name again? >> samara klar. >> i'm never going to get it right. i've done both, and they are absolutely fabulous books. get them. i know these are tough times. but they are vital books. wrote >> because i did not anticipate it, i'm sort of excited by the fact that my colleague and i wrote about the 2016 election campaign and we just didn't know that we were doing that at the time. bob and i have talked about a lot of books and we have written about media and democracy and we are going to sum this up once more.

so then i was over in europe and in europe they actually are interested in media and democracy and they invite you to talk about it. i got a conference of think a tanks dealing with technological change, digital progress and how w automation.e i was struck by the fact that everyone was talking about eliminating jobs. about how we were going to progress. how these companies are going to make more money in the next stage of our digital andet automation advancement by getting rid of immense numbers y of workers. another that can sound very esoteric so let me sum it up. how many folks in the room saw "time" magazine and the cover story was on the driverless card. in the car works. we've been to google, we have seen him.

there are thousands of those cars that have been on the road already. the thing is that you can be on the road in the san francisco bay area and be passed by driverless car in which a blind person is at the wheel or in which a 95-year-old, a couple of 95-year-old women are sitting in front the talking to each other while the car drives by. this is working. the driverless car works. it's been an incredible progression and it's going to be so big in the next 10 years. another factoid. the number one job for men in america is driving. they drive trucks, they drive cabs, they drive buses. but with men this is a disproportionately big job. they used to do things like this but we have pretty much eliminated it. and this is a baseline of work.

we started with two other industries and we found example after example after example ofit automation changes that are going to eliminate massive numbers of jobs. >> it's not just the iphone issue, an issue that is huge that is not discussed by mediaca and that this will be the major issue of the next 25 years.saidh and we will anticipate the thin future. the editor was a brilliant womat and said that one of the thingsc they suggest is the when this p starts to head and people start to become conscious, they could

go to very extreme places politically. some places in the past one moments like this have come, you have actually had possibly fascism and things like that. people exploring rabid, horrific, dangerous responses, rather than looking at the big economic and social changes that are taking place, you actually have started to blame others may be immigrants or something like that. so this is a dangerous moment coming on. at and then we thought, okay. we warned you. and we are going to have to throw donald trump at you andie the fact of the matter is that we did not anticipate donald trump. but the truth is that if you go to a bernie sanders rally will meet 18, 19, 20 years old who grew up marinating in this technological progression, they know more than some of the ceos know. they know it is reality.

so they look at the future with immense concern and fear andndwl uncertainty and they see a t future in which they have a hard time imagining how they will pay for student debt, get a job and begin to approximate the existence of their parents or grandparents. the idea of a socialist it says that i am trying to organize a more humane economy seems more attractive and they're not particularly scared by these words. but then if you see a donald trump rally, and you see a guy e that is laid off and returning to work in a warehouse job, heus is now saying that the work he was doing is being reduced because they have a robot that does it. that guy at that rally does not know it but he is actually having the same concerns as a kid. they are politically opposite and they won't go the same way. but there is a parallel in what

draws people to very unimagined responses and is a couple of years ago. and all i will say is that this is either the last election of the 20th century or the first election of the 21st century. we will make choices this year that will either end an era of not dealing with fundamental issues that will not behe avoidable or we will begin to address them this year and potentially get ahead of them ii a to have the rational humane and decent responses that are possible. that is the edge that we are on in the most important election of your life. i know that you're told that every four years. it is a reality now. thank you.

>> next is samara klar who comes to us from canada. she loves tucson. and we have the audacity to elect this young guy that has all of his progressive ideas. [laughter] so can you talk a little bit about your book and also the implications for the election. >> i have lived in tucson for three years and am very happy tu be here. and i want to thank you for hosting this panel. and i'm just going to give you a brief description of my book. i many of you know that the largest number of people are now independent and many of you might identify yourselves as independents. we have more independence now that we have either democrats om republicans and we have more now than we have ever had the order.

so this is really a big phenomenon in american politics. so i have a co-author is working with me. deciding what to investigate why so many people are calling themselves independents. is there something unique about american politics that makes people want to separate themselves from the parties and finally are there broadnegative consequences for american are political system. what we have found is that there is this growing negative stigmay associated with the democrats and republicans. [inaudible] when you turn on your television or you look at the internet newd every day, what you tend to seeo our people yelling at each other, screaming at each other,f each defining aggression, most persons do not want to be associated with that. i so instead of associating themselves with this negative organization a huge number of

americans upon themselves independents. the secret that they hold is that they do truly support theie party. about 80% of independents who vote for the same party are after your period when you ask them if they preferred a parade party they do leather prefers the democrats are the republicans and they do generally only vote for that party. so why is it that they are calling themselves independents? it is this negative stigma associated. the problem is that this negative stigma also discourages people from participating in one of the activities of the parties really needs to send you things like admitting who you are supporting in public. putting a yard yahrzeit on your lawn, wearing a sticker, the same motivation is also discouraging as grassroots activism. we see this turn towards nonestablishment candidates, people are rejecting the establishment in favor of

candidates to make them feel as though they're no longer supporting the same party and they are tired of being on the news. so what is the implications of this election i think that's it is pretty self-evident and what we have seen in 2016 is this monumental turn toward what we think of as outsider candidates, donald trump, bernie sanders and ted cruz, candidates that are not associated with the talisman. as we have argued that this is because people are sick and tired of washington parties and they don't want to be associated with either of them. [applause] >> thank you.le >> okay, so i have a series of questions from analysts. let me start over here to describe this book and thek implications. there's so much in there. i encourage you to read all then books.s. your book was particularlyy important because of the

involvement with the attempt to change the decision that the supreme court had made in the bill that was introduced when i was a cosponsor and hopefully one day it will emerge. but i wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about this situation not odd and so we can talk about what happened and hor it occurred and how it can be, how can i be reversed.14 >> first when we first met, ront told me that he lost his election in 2014 by 157 vote. so anyone who thinks that voting does not matter, 157 votes.

there are three times as many people in this room at this point time. and so you are my new case study as to why it matters. it's interesting what happened after the passage of the voting rights act. on the one hand it did become of him is out this out to you and it enabled the election of moderate white democrats like jimmy carter and and bill clinton that would not have been elected if it wasn't for the voting rights a. [inaudible] but he would not have been able to vote in 1965. so it's too simplistic to say bt that it turned the south republicans said there was certainly a very large backlash not just because of the voting rights act but because the related pieces of civil rights in general. if you look at american history

there was this remarkable time of reconstruction in the integrated government in the south for the first time. when people who were enslaved became the first lack senators and governors of states like louisiana and mississippi and there are 22 african-american members of congress from the south during reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s. and that has spawned a vicious white supremacy backlash whererm we saw things like tactics and grandfather clauses and property requirements, and it was called redemption.ap redeeming the whiteout. i think something similar happened after the passage of the voting rights act where millions of people were were registered in a place like alabama were only 2% were registered to vote and you had

to be able to name all the judges on the voting rolls in order to be able to vote. something that many would not have been able to do as they faced a test. all of a sudden you have thousands of african-americans registered in a period of days because of the voting rights act and to act really shifts the power dynamics and so because of his you've got people like andrew young and john lewis elected to the congress whichin was unfathomable in 1965. there is a significant backlash against that and they began organizing in a lot of different ways. they began organizing on the local levels and then they realized they were more conservative whites in their work newly registered african-american voters.ut the and we have appealed to the

conservatives a white backlash. so they actually build to get to the congress, they failed to get the executive branch. and they made a determined effort to change the reflection of the courts over a 50 year time frame. so we moved from this in 1966 on the first anniversary anniversary of the bloody sunday march, they a overwhelmingly upheld in the t three to one decision. seven years later they gutted the act. it wasn't that the country had changed so dramatically although it had changed dramatically, what had changed was that all the presidents like richard nixon and ronald reagan and george w. bush had appointed the

justices on the court and thatit the strategy that had begun as a backlash in 1965 was able to capture a majority of the republican party to the way they cannot do the things five decades later they were unable to do after the passage of this in the 1960s. soon i think you very much. let me turn next over to john. your book always has provocative but insightful quotes and i would like to share a couple of these with our audience today and ask you to expand. in one part uses the gadgets are new but the relationships are all old. then you go on to say that it's simply absurd to engage in wishful thinking that says that capitalistic society that prioritizes profitable somehow involved for the better. it has never been done and it never will. and he also talked a little bit

about how the polling shows that the vast majority of americans think that there is business that has too much control over their lives and government. with that in mind i think that you alluded to it that we have two candidates and that they were both appealing, it seems, to that notion. to that idea that the people feel that big business corporate entities, the 1% and all that have way too much influence and i heard on tv that people are saying that i'm not sure. i might vote for donald trump or i might vote for sanders and i think how is that possible to have that dilemma. can you comment on what is similar about these two candidates and their appeal and what is different and what it might say about the electorates? >> thank you.

one of the moderators actually reads books. so it is a wonder. [laughter] >> a rare member of congress. [applause] >> and then they also suggested -- and the wonder of him is that he knows the issues. however, let me suggest that the answer to your question is one that takes us to a place that's far beyond this. the truth of the matter is that i cannot imagine more people are fundamentally different than bernie sanders and donald trump area i believe that they are on the opposite end and an ideological spectrum they could find with some high variation or something like that. they are completely different. and the supporters of bernie sanders are disproportionately

young. they are working class but they tend to be members of the working class but have never really done a lot of chance to work. and there really is quite a difference there. but the donald trump individuals tend to relate more in that they are people that maybe once identified in this way and they are so furious and angry. if you go to a donald trump rally going to find backers of hate their own party when they do the other parties. that is an amazing concept. and donald trump says i think i'm going to bash on you guys for a while. and everybody is like okay. the crowd loves that. because they despise bishop of their party. that's not so true with the bernie sanders folks. they are not as nearly like

that. but what is this thing that is drawing people forward with responses that would not have been possibly discussed in the past? it's the time, if the circumstance and it isn't a candidate. i know that it is a jarring thought for anyone who has watched the media coverage of this campaign, which has been lifestyles of the rich and political. it is a totally ridiculous, the worst coverage of the campaign that i have ever seen in the history of my life. it is irresponsible and they had tightened one candidate up to a level that is absurdly high and even if it's negative coverage it is still coverage. it has denied candidates in his own party. >> part of this is that our economy is radically changing and we are going through changes that are going to be more

jarring than the industrial revolution. there is simply no question of this. he said this is going to be the big issue. and that the people are kind of on to this thing. and so they are pushing the limit out very rapidly but without any attempt by the media or most of the political individuals to put it into context. until that happens here is the bottom line of it. is that it is on you and you're going to have to fix this thing. it is not what happened. it is right. if i could return to paradise i would do it. if i can lead you in, someone else can we do out.

about. the fact of the matter is that the dynamic of where we are at is going to define our political future. what you have to demand is a deeper and better debate than what we are getting. you have to scream and yell and beg and push and fight for it. and some of you may vote for candidates on either side or you could find people to become vehicles for this. but the key thing is to make a corrupt and dysfunctional center that can make people start to talk about fundamental issues of our time. until that happens you're going to have campaigns have become more volatile and extreme because people won't hear anything in the mainstream politics of their time reflects the reality of their experience. the fact of the matter is that we have gone through this before. 200 years ago in the first industrial revolution the first response was brilliant, wonderful people that responded to change that was so jarring

that they decided to break the machine. they were put down, they didn't succeed. but they kept thinking how are we going to deal with this. essentially they became chartist and demand that reforms that brought them to the table. the answer that we are going to is not a political party or in app or a candidate. the answer to the time that we are going into is going to be dramatically more democracy that says that you, the people of this country, have a right not just to make decisions on election day but to make decisions on the shape and scope and character of our democracy and our economy. if we don't have a say on the future of the economy than our future is going to be staggeringly dire, not just economically but socially. >> and on that light note. [laughter] >> thank you, john.

john always tells it like it is. [laughter] >> they are going out to organize. >> there you go. >> they are not going to wait until the end of this panel, they are going to fight right now. >> speaking of organizing and how people choose to identify themselves. when i ran for congress, one third of the voters in my district -- i think the independence now are second in registration in the state of to arizona. so i would like to quote a a couple of things which i thought were particularly interesting. one by paul who i love reading. he said that by and large given the vast differences in partiese these days, independent voters are basically confused and whose clueless people. and that is emporia. and pundits and political operatives believe that independence can be persuaded

are wrong. if that last quote is correct, what does that mean they are not persuadable?? because from my perspective those are the folks that you go after. because you know who your bases in each party. you go after the independent because that is how you win races and competitive districts. can you tell us why they are not persuadable? >> they are not because the vast majority have a preferred party, they have always voted for that party and they know exactly who they are going to vote for. at most, 7% of americans are independence without any party preference. well over 90% actually do or for a party.he the reason that they will not come out and say it is because they do not want to be associated with that party.ar so we have found is that americans actually think independents are more trustworthy. independence in the mass public. they think that the independents

are more physically attractive. they think that the opinions are more likable. so people want to be known as the independents are not known as partisan. so it is a bit more productive for media, first of all, to spend so much time focusing on the independence when the independents are not really there to persuade, they know exactly who they are voting for. so i suppose i would disagree on this point that they are not clueless people and they are wih informed voters, many are very engaged, they just don't want to be associated with either party. >> and they may be more attractive. [applause]betty >> anyone who feels like they are independent and not attractive enact. >> there so many things to discuss. going through a quick lightning round before we get to the question from the audience. i would like to focus for a moment on justice scalia.

there was a quote in your book that i should not be astounded because it was him that it said that the voting rights act is a phenomenon that is called a perpetuation of racial entitlement. so i read in your book that john lewis was sitting in the court when he made those statements and i can only imagine how shocking that was to him. but what can you say about his demise and the potential for a new justice depending upon what president gets to do it in terms of the voting rights act and other laws that govern how people get to vote? >> well, that comment, and i was sitting there, you are sort of looking around, trying to figure out which one is talking at any given point in time.

but justice scalia talked about why the voting rights act is so popular and instead of talking about how i got millions of new people into this instead of relating to the fact that it is the most important piece of civil rights legislation of the 1960s and talking about the fact that it really made thect u.s. a democracy, instead he said that support for the voting rights act was attributable to a perpetuation of racial entitlement. and he said the people of talked about it. and the courtroom last when he said that an john lewis was sitting in the front row nicad thinking how is john lewis reacting to this.we i interviewed the congressman the next day and he told me that he nearly cried.ried w and right after that john lewis

red a pilgrimage to alabama with members of congress and i was on that trip. and we re-created the march in selma where he was brutally ala beaten by the alabama state troopers and i thought about all of the things that the congressman went through to get the voting rights act asked what he nearly died to get this law passed in here you have a justice of the supreme court talking about this law as a perpetuation and i thought that it was so important and that is a prelude to saying that i believe that the supreme court is the most important issue in the 26th election and we say that every single election, but now it is true. because i have lived with this

for my entire life and i believe that that has been the biggest change in this country and i believe that it is no in it is coincidence. i believe that it is no coincidence that the suprememe court gave us the citizens united decision in the voting rights act. because having visited the supreme court they believe theya want to make it easier to buy an election and harder to vote in one. and so that is why the stakes of this election are so high. and i think that it's great that there is a robust race between hillary clinton and bernie sanders and it's healthy for democracy. the difference between who they

appoint compared to ted cruz or donald trump or even john kasich would appoint to the supreme court you are talking about having justice scalia or justice sotomayor and the difference is between those two people so unbelievably dramatic. and i think that it's so high when she passed away. >> the decisions that you mentioned are pretty important have major verifications were country. and that was another election decision that really changed the country and can only imagine that. john, i wanted to ask you a little bit about the reference in your book to fascism, neofascism, there's been a lot going around particularly in the donald trump campaign. where would you go with that. do you think that it is a neofascist movement? to think that he's really

appealing to that? >> i think that a lot of the media loves to blame the people. because after you blame the politicians and after you blames the people, you know, usually you have everybody pointing at each other and that works out pretty well. he would not possibly point to yourself. one of the greatest journalists of the 20th century and i would argue the greatest media critic of the start of the 21st century, the guy wrote about this and he died a few days ago at the age of 96. and so what they than predicted was that as we dramatically consolidated our media as we were placed civic and democratic values with commercial and entertainment values and we started to cover our politics ae

a sport and as a theater rather than something that is incredibly important to the people and that very quickly you would see the lives of master manipulators who would use the dogma beast character of our media and feed the little factoids in bits and pieces politically. now, you can look at history and say that in the past a neofascist or an authoritarian had taken over the media and use it as a tool to advance the a political goals and i would suggest that it did not have to occur. we have a media now that foster is a fully dysfunctional set of politics in america and it is a [a disastrous media and so unfortunately people do fit into roles and there are things happening at trump rallies now

that are so jarring and so horrifying and so unsettling and also such a group thank. we need to pull a break and say that this is unreasonable. and to treat donald trump when he sits there and says things happen at rallies and i think it's the bernie sanders sanders activists under the problem here, no, no, i saw a couple weeks ago the doctor was on television. and they asked about a mussolini quote. a and he said you know, no, it was a good quote. and at that point rather than say are people following this guy, how are they acting and how are they behaving which is awful and a serious issue, what we

ought to be saying is that this man, no matter where he is coming from is he is too much of a fool to not know that mussolini was the ally of adolf hitler and the advancement of the genocidal war against humanity and a war in which hundreds of thousands of americans sacrificed their lives and their body, if he sits there, he got a good quote now and again. that is the point where the media system ought to say this is not bias. this is not opinionated journalism but it is a fact and to cruel and unusual to be the president of the united stateses of america. >> let me just give you an

opportunity to address another question. >> you know, you might think with so many people registering with no party affiliation they might be calling for us. so why are they not hard for us to be more bipartisan. and so tell me about that. tell us about that. that move what is it about the movement towards independence and why people are not calling for more bipartisanship. >> that is one of the more troubling findings of which are from our research. and also we find is that when independents are asked in one

all americans are asked what they want from the representatives, most people say compromised in their ads toco achieve compromise to try to break the gridlock. but ultimately when people are told that their congressperson sacrifices their principles in order to reach a compromise, people are furious very at they do not want their own compromise, they want the other party spurs and compromise. and so the problem for american democracy and that the independence are pretending tha' they don't support the party that they support that they will do very little to actually help that party. and they are calling for compromise when this occurs in both parties and that they believe that compromise means the other party is going to make sacrifices. until they are willing to sacrifice her own party struggles we will not achieve

that. >> well, thank you, that is very helpful.stions >> asking the question briefly, going over to you, the gentleman over here. >> thank you. i would really appreciate what the panel has in talking abouts and i have been trying to psycho analyze my own reaction to this campaign season and politics ise my number one hobby. i have always been interested, my parents tommy politics around the kitchen table when i was a kid. but because there is only five or six huge corporations run by multimillionaires, they are running this campaign just like a reality show came to me last night that it is a reality show and my wife loves these reality shows. i kind of get sucked into them.

i realize that i was kind of getting off on that.. in our media has abandoned this informing the people, the one thing that i think is that they have the internet and lots of great sources of information and so it's not like there's no way to learn. but myself, i get sucked into the mainstream media giving them hours of my time. so my question is about donald trump in the way that he has played up the violence, manipulating it, even today. and with that black protester.

and i am concerned. in there is a way to a tube down this maelstrom. >>. >> here is the bottom-line. kin to be all just get along? in the media system appears to be literally incapable of what they're dealing with. but here is the bottom-line to go to those fundamental issues you cannot have debate where the moderators literally ask, the other day trump will, what were you referring to there? i mean this is such trivia it is an. to? you become stupider by watching

the debate and if you didn't watch them. [applause] the bottom line is this, the bottom line is this. he said journalists must understand their duty is into their bosses. their duty is into some bottom line. their duty is to the people. we have a free press as an underpinning of democracy in thy america and the fact of the matter as i believe there are people at trump rallies who could rise to a higher level who could rise to a higher discussion that i don't expect donald trump is going to take them there but i would hope that our media would be forcing it to that higher level. t i do believe hillary clinton and bernie sanders now and again tried but here's the bottom line john kasich also tries but here's the bottom line we are not discussing the fundamental issues that are at the core of his campaign. until we discuss the fundamentam issues this trivia will continue to degenerate towards uglier and

more volatile places because when you are sick and you ugoda doctor before you go you are filled with fear and tension and concern and you are open to any possibility. i don't care what that doctor tells you, no matter how tired your diagnosis is once you know the diagnosis, once you know the problem then you can start to address it in spain sane in realistic ways. all that our media is doing is keeping it us and many for candidates in the place where we have not gotten to the doctor yet and this is going to get more and more dangerous, and i have to blame our media for an awful lot of this. [applause] >> a brief question. bel >> i heard on democracy now harvey wasserman say that any state with a republican governor and a republican secretary of state with voting mne