slaveholder. >> to any notes reflect and that is one of the fun things that i do is have people looking at a different set and we compare them but other people's notes are written in first person in describe when people get mad.

so where they say very crazy things in this sounds like they are debating things and read disagree what madison wrote about himself. so he wrote his own speeches. it is hard to take notes while you were talking it by a tick in notes on what is said to david lee b. brilliant things and coherent purpose and he recreated the speeches after the fact in day bear some resemblance but always much more coherent and very thoughtful and so his own version was quite different. >> randolph was very close

to madison the fathers had both died so they had come into the possessions for of plantations in madison's father lives for a long time and then dies just shortly before madison and then never can't grow up some then lend him the money for his own house if he says i don't need that but they are very close in randolph is very tall isn't good-looking but everybody looks at madison in decides who gives the great speech randolph

thought it was really bad to have a single president madison thinks that is a nonstarter in over the course of the convention they grew apart. . .

>> so glad to be able to moderate and be invited to do so. we want to thank c-span, which is actually broadcasting this panel live as we speak and also book tv and cox communication for sponsorship of the venue. the presentation will probably last about an hour and the last

15 or 20 minutes we will reserve for questions and answers from our panel and i know you've probably all have questions and even more after you've listened to this very distinguished group of panelists but we ask you to hold your questions and make sure we give 20 minutes to your question. right after the session, the panelists will be available to sign or autograph their books and their books, of course, on sale, you go for that booth 153 which is sponsored by the university of arizona bookstore. the books as i said will be available on that location. if you like to meet all of the panelists, interview with c-span following with c-span so she will be late, but hold on, she will be there in due course, and

because i think owe are all enjoying the festival, i assume you are. [cheers and applause] >> it's one of the real treasures that we have here in tucson and i just want to acknowledge, i think he's still in the room, bill binder was here a minute ago. where is he? [applause] >> there he is. bill, bill and brenda are just the critical players in making this event happen with lots of volunteers and other members in steering committee and she had acknowledged the great work that they have done and because you are here and enjoying the sessions and the whole event, that you will be a member of the friends of the festival program, you can make a tax deductible donation which allowed the programming to go on, free of charge to the public and my phone is ringing, of course.

next warning is turning off the cell phones. [laughter] >> it's donald trump calling in. >> he heard that we were having a civil discussion and decided to disrupt it. >> unlike meet the press, we are going to go on with the program. >> well, that was timing and let me finish, though, about the friends of the festival program if you make a tax deductible donation will allow the fest call continue without charging the public and as you probably know the festival donates literally thousands and thousands of dollars to local charities and that's another reason that hopefully you will donate. to do so and become a friend in person, student union ballroom where you can go to the website for the festival. so now the warning which i was

going to -- should have given myself, out of respect for everyone in the audience and panelists, please turn off your phone, if you have it put it on vibrate or turn it off for the duration. now it's my honor and pleasure to introduce our panelists and to have this discussion start. first of all, next to see me is ark ry burman. he's a political correspondent for the nation and he has written articles in a variety of outlets with magazines, rolling stones and new york times and you may have heard him, someone heard him on mpr. sitting next to him is john nichols, john is -- is coming back to the festival. he was here last year and i was able to be a moderator for his

panel too. john is correspondent, reporter, rather, and a writer with many, many publications and the one we will be discussing today, people get ready, you may have heard of the song and this is essential very provocative book about where we are in the democracy. lastly, samara clark. >> you got it. >> she coached me on how to pronounce the name. assistant professor here at the university of arizona and the college that i graduated back in, you know, some year. [laughter] and it was a time of great excitement and it was particularly exciting because it was like being in vietnam war. she will be one of the three panelists today. so a little bit about the books, people get ready is written not

only by john but by robert and it talked about where we are in our democracy or not, where the economy of our country is going, where the big money in politics is taking us and the potential that we'll have unemployment staggering levels if we don't take steps to change the way our system works, our economy works, our political system is driven. and ary's book, gives us the ballot, modern struggle for voting rights of america. i loved john's book but this one i found particularly personally important. it's about what happened after, before and after the voting rights act was enacted back in 1965 when lbj was president. it's a history i never really heard or learned before. it was my honor to serve in congress with congressman john

lewis, one of the most incredible people you could ever meet and john was very modest. he didn't really talk about at least in congress about his history, people knew it. but this book talks not only about john and all of the other members of the civil rights movement, the importance of their work, but also what has been happening to the voter, the act since 1965, the war, if you will t attack on the voting rights act to try to scale it back, diminish it and so forth. so that's why i take a particular important issue for us us to be considering knowing that we have states across the country where restrictive laws on voting rights are being enacted. arizona, obviously, is no exception. i want to welcome you all and thank you for being here. i want to pose the first question to each of our panelists. >> amary's book. >> i'm sorry, did i not mention

it? bad moderator. independent politics. professor here, how americans sustained for parties leads to political inaction and i think what we know about arizona and the country is the fastest growing group of registered voters, are people who are declaring no party. we often call them independents but there's a wide range and what that means for the future of our political discourse and political action in our country and the embarrassment as you described that people have to be partisan, to be described as partisan and how that plays out in both conversation and ultimately in how people actually vote. thanks for that prompt. so let me start with ary and ask him to give you a brief overview of his book and beyond what i said and i keep panelists in turn to do the same but when

they are doing it to talk about implications of their work, of their book for what is going on in our country right now, it's an an extraordinary challenging and different kind of election period, i was telling samara, as a student the politics of my youth, i've never seen anything like it. would you all agree? so i would like each panelists to at least discuss how their theme or perspective, what it says about where we are in the country in the election. let's start with ary. >> thank you so much for that kind introduction, ron, and it's great to be on this panel, samara and jack nichols, usually when we were together, who knows if i will get a word in. it's really great. >> okay, your time is up. [laughter] >> thank you very much. >> thank you all for sticking it out. i think it's the last session of the day, many of you have been in many, many panels, this is my

first visit to tucson and i'm enjoy about hiking and tacos, it's been really nice to be here. my book has drawn mention as history of voting rights since 1965, everything that came after the passage of the voting rights act of 1965, which was the most important rights of civil rights in the 1960's, i began covering the issues after the 2010 election when many states flipped from blue to red or became a whole lot redder and we began to see a wave of new voting restrictions, things like making it harder to register to vote, cutting back on early voting, rerequiring strict forms of id that you never needed in any previous election, disenfranchiseing exfelons. it wasn't really getting any coverage. so i became the first national reporter to cover this, first for rolling stone and then for

the nation magazine and i really covered this issue all the way through 2012 election when in florida for example, because that state cut early voting and eliminated early voting when african american churches historically held drives, we saw six-hour lines on election day in florida and president obama when he was reelected, we have to fix that, but what happened after the 2012 election is the supreme court struck down a key part of the voting rights act, really the center piece of voting rights act that those states with the longest histories of voting had to approve with the federal government. that part of the law blocked 3,000 decrime gnatory changes from taking effect from 1965 to 2013. so it was an extremely important part of the most civil rights law of the 1960's. it was at that point that i

decided to write my book. people was fighting for things he had won five decades later and just to talk about where we are in 2016 because this is very relevant to my book, the 2016 election is the first presidential election in 50 years without full protections of the voting rights act. this is the first presidential election since supreme court gutted the voting rights act as a result 16 states now have new voting restrictions in place for the first time, very important swing states like wisconsin, and ohio, and north carolina and virginia. and so i know there's been so much coverage in the media about who people are going to vote for and what the polls are going to

say, i've been asking a very different question, would every eligible voter be able to cast a ballot and i'm very concerned that they will not be able to and so when you talk about the direction of our democracy, the theme of this panel, i don't think you can talk about the direction of democracy without talking about what's going on with the voting rights and what's happening, 20 presidential debates and the issue of voting rights has not come up. i think that's a national tragedy. one of the most fundamental issues in the 2016 election and regardless if you're a democrat or independent or republican, you should see that everyone has the right to vote. [applause] >> let's ask john the same question, a little bit about your book and what it means, what you're saying means for the

2016 presidential and basically racist -- races across the country. >> if you don't have ari's book gets it and samara. i'm never going to get it right but we are going to do samara's book which i read both and they are absolutely fabulous books so get them, you have the money, i know these are tough times but they are really vital books. let me tell you a little bit about mine. i will modestly suggest that because i didn't anticipate it i'm sort of excited by the fact that my colleague and i wrote about that's all about 2016 election campaign. we just didn't know that we were doing that at the time. about three years ago we were going to write the next book about media and democracy, i can sum it up, both are always in

crisis, so we were going to sum the crisis once more and then i was over in europe and i was at a conference because in europe are interested in media and democracy and invite you to come and talk about it. i was at a conference also to ceo's of major companies, big thinkers, people running big tanks and i was struck by the fact that every one was talking about eliminating jobs, about how we were going to progress, how all of these companies were going to make more money in the stage of our digital and automation advancement by getting rid of immense number of workers and so let me sum it up for you. how many folks saw time magazine this week in the cover story was on the driverless car? and you know what, the

driverless car works. we've been to google and we have seen them. there are thousands of driverless cars that have been on the road already. the thing of it is you can be passed by a driverless car in which a blind person is quote, unquote at the wheel and a 95-year-old women are sitting in the front seat talking to each other while the car drives right by you. this is really. the driverless car works, it's an incredibly effective progression and it's going to go so big in the next ten years, one of the factoids, just a little one. the number one of -- jobs for men are driving. women do too, they used to do things like manufacturing and we

pretty much eliminated those jobs. as a result driving is a baseline work, as we started to go through all other industries, we found example after example of automation changes that are going to eliminate massive numbers of jobs and interestingly enough the media in this campaign, you talk about voting rights not coming up, you're talking about an issue that is huge that's not the bells and whistles or any new iphone 17, an issue that is huge is what everybody with immense wealth and power discusses all of the time that this will be the major issue of the next 25 years of this country, the critical issue. bob and i thought were really bright and we were going to write a book and we will anticipate the future, and our editor was a brilliant woman said, the only thing we are troubled by is you have a view and you think one of the things

you suggest when this start stuff to get and people become conscious of it they might go to extreme places politically and some places in the past when moments like this have come, you actually had a fashism. rather than looking at economy and social change. you have politicians starting to blame others, like immigrant or anything like that. dangerous moment coming on and our editor -- i think we got too extreme there. we said, okay, you know, we warned you and we are going to have to throw trump at you. [laughter] >> and the fact of the matter is we did not anticipate donald trump. the truth is if you go to a bernie sanders rally, you're going to meet 18, 19, 20-year-olds who grew up marinated in this technological

progression, they know more than some of the ceo's know about it and they also know it's potential, they know it's reality, they look at the future with immense concern, fear, uncertainty, they see a future in which they have a very hard time imagining how they will pay for their student debt, how they will get a job and how they will begin to approximate the existence of their parents and grandparents. i'm trying to organize a little more, seems rather attractive and they're not particularly scared by the s word. if you go to a trump rally you see a 58-year-old, retrained to work in aware house job and the work is being reduce, reduced because they have a robot that does that. that guy in trump rally doesn't know it but he has that same concerns as that kid. they are politically opposite, don't fantasize it that

parallelism here, but there is a parallel in what draws people to very, very unimagined responses from just a couple years ago, and all i will say to close off and we will talk a lot more about this, this is either the last election of the 20th century or the first election of the 21st century, that's the bottom line. we will make choices this year that will either end an era of not dealing with fundamental issues which would not be avoidable in a jobless future certainly with a citizenless democracy or we will begin to address them this year and potentially get ahead of them enough to have the rational humane and decent response that is are responsible. this is the most important election of your life and i know you're told that every four years, it was a fantasy in the past, it is a reality now.

thank you. [applause] >> now, next is samara who comes to us from canada. she loves tucson and i don't know about canadians, you have the audacity to elect with this progressive guy, what's wrong with you up there? race race. >> could you talk a little bit about your book and the implications of the 2016 election? >> sure, i have lived in tucson for three years now. i'm happy to here in tucson and i want to thank you for hosting this panel. i'm going to give you a brief description of my book and as many of you know, the largest number of people in the electorate are now independents and many of you might identify yourself as an independent, in fact, we have more independents

now than either democrats or republicans and we have more independents than we have had before so this is a really big phenomena in politics, the rise of the independent voter so i have a coauthor who has worked with me on the book. yana and i decide today investigate why so many people are calling themselves independent, is there something unique that makes people want to separate from the parties and finally are there broad consequences for the political system. what we found is there's a negative stigma associated and people are frankly ashamed to be associate with either party and that is because of two things, first the increasing negative coverage that we see of politics in the media when you turn on your television or you look at the internet news every day, partisans yelling at each other, you see fighting, aggression and most important do not want to be associated with that, so instead

of associating themselves with this negative organization, a huge number of americans are now calling themselves independent, now the secret, is that they truly support a party. not all independent support a party but about 80 support who vote for the same party year after year, when you asked them if they prefer a party, yes, they either prefer democrats or republicans and they do generally vote for that party, why is it that they're calling emselves independent, it's the negative stigma associated with partisanship. the problem is this negative stigma also discourages people from participating in a lot of the activities that parties really need to win, things like admitting who you're supporting in public, putting a yard sign on your lawn, encouraging your friends to vote t same motivation that drives people to call themselves independents is

discouraging and we see a turn for nonestablishment candidates. what we have seen in 2016 is this monumental turn toward what we think of as outsider candidate, donald trump, bernie sanders and even ben carson and ted cruz, candidates that are not associated with the establishment. this is because people are sick and tired of washington parties and they don't want to be associated with either of them. >> thank you. [applause] >> let me start with ari. there's so much in there, like john said, i encourage you to read all of the books and for me

your book ari was particularly important because of my own involvement with an attempt in congress to change the decision that the supreme court had made about the voting rights act, the bill that was introduced that i was a cosponsor of and one day will be merged. but i wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about the rise of the south after the voting rights act. the rise of the south of had historically been a democratic region in our country to one that became republican and has continued to send republicans increasing numbers to congress so can you talk about that can be reversed? >> yeah, well, first off when we first met ron told me that he lost his election in 2014 by 157

votes so anyone who thinks that voting doesn't matter, 157 votes, there's three times as many people in the room probably. so you're my new case study. you're my new stays study as to why voting matters. on the one hand, the south did become a lot more republican, on the other hand t voting rights act enabled the election of moderate white democrats like jimmy carter and bill clinton who have not been elected without the voting rights acts and the first african american president who carried three states where he had not been able to vote in 1965 more than likely. there was a backlash not just because of voting rights act but

legislation in general. if you look at american history after the civil war there was a remarkable period of reconstruction, when we had integrated government in the south for the first time and when people who were enslaved became the first black senators and governors of states like louisiana and mississippi and there were 22 african american members of congress from the south during reconstruction in the 1860's and 1870's and that spawn a vicious white supremacists where we saw grandfather clauses and requirements and gave us jim crow. it was called redemption, redeeming the white south and i think manager similar happened after the passage of the voting rights act. millions of people were registered in a place like selma, alabama where 2% were

registered to vote before the passage of the voting rights act and you had 67 counties judges to get on the voting roles. something that judges would not have been able to do themselves. all of a sudden you have thousands of african americans registered to vote because of the voting rights act and the voting rights act shift the power of dynamics, you got people like andrew young and barbara jordan and john lewis elect today congress but there was a significant backlash against that and the right began organizing and began organizing in a lot of different ways. they began organizing first in the local level. they realized there were more conservative whites still than there were newly registered african american voters and people like george wallace in alabama played that. it started on locally and then moved to presidential

candidates. they could swing state that is always voted for democrats by appealing to the conservative, a white backlash vote and made an effort to gut the voting rights act and they failed to gut the voting white's act and failed to get the branch to gut it. they turned to the courts and they made a determined effort to change the complexion of the course over a 50-year period so we moved from 1966 on the first anniversary of the bloody sunday march, the supreme court overwhelming upheld the constitutionality of the voting rights act in 8 to 1 decision. and three basically 47 years later the supreme court gutted the voting rights act and it wasn't so much the country had changed so dramatically during that period, it had changed very dramatically, what had changed was that presidents like richard

nixon and ronald reagan and george w. bush had had appointed the justices on the court and that the strategy that had begun as backlash in 1965 was able to capture a majority of courts and capture the republican party to the point where they could do the things five decades later that they were unable to do after the passage of vra in the 1960's. ..

>> >> so i want to ask a couple of things from your book that are interesting. sold by in large independent voters are confused people

in those operatives believe to be persuaded they are wrong. befell last quote is correct what does that mean they're not persuade rebel? certainly from my perspective those of the ones that you go after become as you know, your base of the party. that is how you win in the races. keg you tell us? >> they are not persuaded will the vast majority of independents have always voted for the party and they know who they will vote for. that 7 percent are independent without a preference well over 90 percent in the reason they will not say that is

they don't want to be associated with that party. in to talk about to have them more physically attractive and more likable they don't want to be known as partisan. said to be counterproductive for the media and spends so much time focusing on independence in so many are engaged with politics. >> they may be more attractive. >> 80 betty field not attractive?

>> in just the quick like being around. from the recently departed justice scalia. in here is what it said. so i read in your book that scalia made those statements. the at what can you say about this bill vietnamized the penny a which president gets to do that? in that comment from the oral arguments of the voting rights act case and put them

behind up teller. new york the voting rights act is so popular. and then to talk about the fact it made the u.s. say democracy instead of the supporting rights act with the perpetuation of racial entitlement. people have talked about this but he has the only person new york. [laughter] and the court room aghast when he said that in jobless was sitting in the front row. how was john the was reacting to this? i interviewed him the next

day and he told me he nearly cried when the justice scalia, this is someone arrested more than 40 times and almost killed in the nearly cried when he heard this and right after that angeles led a march in alabama with members of congress and i was on that trip. and did to be beaten by the alabama state troopers. he nearly died to get the law passed here you have the justice of the supreme court of entitlements it is so important to tell the story house someone like john lewis made it to congress

that is the most important issue. but now its true because i have lived if the conservative supreme court my entire life. with the roberts court. and since the retirement with the biggest impediment to progress and change. [applause] in it is no coincidence to give us citizens united and the voting rights act with the supreme court that believes the one to make it easier.

it is great there was a robust debate but ted cruz or donald trump talk about either having justice scalia or so my your. that is unbelievably dramatic to be so high. >>, and what was mentioned with that 2000 election so let's talk about neofascism.

unleaded is going on. where do you go with that? but it's again because after the politicians everybody points at each other and i would argue the greatest media critic. in the neck the age of 96 as

predicted as the consolidated the media to replace civic and democratic values with commercial and entertainment as the sport it is incredibly important to see the rise of the master manipulators said to be part of that neo-fascist to use that as a goal. i would suggest we have the