the way. baltimore was burning. south carolina, folks are marching across the bridge together holding hands, like and white, powerful. my point to you is i think we are in the civil war of words. different. when we talk to each other, the way we speak to each other is bad and it's got to stop. i'm all for free speech but you can respect your brother and disagree at the same time. >> host: sophia nelson, "e pluribus one" you knocked it out of the park with this one. this is a compelling reclamation, reclaiming america's founding vision, as you say. and it's just a real pleasure to sort of break it down with you and get a little bit behind the curtain, if you will. >> guest: you are just like oppressor. i felt like i was a law student. thank you, michael hosting really appreciate you. take care.

>> welcome back to the campus of university of arizona and day two of the tucson festival of books. booktv is life again today. ..

>> this is the tv on c-span2 and we are going live to the first panel on politics. [inaudible conversations] >> welcome. good to have you here. welcome to the nice annual festival of books in tucson. it's under incredible experience for all of us in tucson to have this with such incredible speakers and authors coming in from all over the country. i will be your moderator this morning.

[applause]. >> think you. you are very kind. when i think cox cox mccue-- can indication for sponsoring this then you. mr. nichols is sponsored by cindy and neil raney. can we have a quick round of applause parsed bonser's. [applause]. >> this will last an hour and immediately following the session the authors will go to the book signing tent. mr. nichols will be a bit delayed, so david will sign his books for you, if he would like. [applause]. >> which will increase their value. >> it's the arizona bookstore tent in the mall booth and you can buy books there and mr. nichols will have a interview immediately after the

session. we hope you're enjoying the festival. how many of you have been here once before? look at this. how many of you have been here nine times? look at you. if you enjoy this festival, which obviously you do, we would like you to invite-- we would like to let you to become a friend of the festival. i learned this morning it is one of the only nonprofit book festivals in the country and you know the money that is raised-- [applause]. >> the money that is raised goes to charity, so if you want to be a friend and contribute financially we would like you to text: friend, 252-0214.

there is a sign at the front of the room-- there we go. please do that. texting is a simple and you can make a small contribution to support the festival today and in the future. we would like you to all turn off your cell phone. text later. we want uninterrupted conversation this morning. let me tell you a bit about who is with us today. first of all sitting next to me is david maraniss. did i get it right this time? >> i enjoy getting the name mispronounced. >> david maraniss. he told me 10 times before, short-term memory loss or something. must be politics. associate editor for the

"washington post" and winner of numerous awards for writing including winning the pulitzer for national reporting and 93, for his coverage of the bill clinton's presidential campaign and he also shared a pulitzer with other riders from the post for their writing on-- in 2008 on the virginia tech shooting and some of us in tucson can relate to that sad and tragic event. he also writes about sports, not just politics and he is a fan of that music, so if you go to spot a five he has put a list of his favorite motown tunes on that is a sort of mentioned a lot here in this book that we will talk about this morning. songs by smokey robinson and all of that, so if you are into that motown, good place to go. david has written many books.

we will talk about a few this morning, one is a book in 2015 " once in a great city: a detroit city-- story" and the second one he turned me onto recently. i have not read it yet, but i will. i have not gotten far into this, but it is a great read for those of you that are interested in that time in our history. he has also written barack obama, the story 2013 and one that i like come i have not seen it yet, but i read it when i was looking at his biography, he co-authored with michael white scoff. i'm not ready, but i'm fascinated by the title, tell newt to shut up. wouldn't we all like to do that? intriguing.

i saw it on sale. >> life of a writer. >> david will talk about his book and other things as we talk about the condition of our country today politically. john nichols i'm sure you have seen before. he was on the panel that i moderated last year in the year before and it is currently the washington correspondent for the nation and associate editor of the capital times. you have probably seen him on various talk shows and he was in high demand in 2016. i saw him more than typically. this is interesting bit of trivia. you come here not only for the panel, but trivia. john has appeared in a documentary which i think is relevant-- relevant today that we shown in 2004. it covers topics that we are

talking about today, so corporate ownership of the media , the election that was decided by the supreme court, bush the core, how presidential elections can be manipulated by foreign governments, the reagan election which iranians delayed the release of the hostages until the day of an operation. it is not new. looking at it today, but it's not new. so, john has a number of books and the one that most recent book is this one called "people get ready". he has also written and i think we talked about this last year how the money and the media election conflicts is destroying america. he wrote both of those books with his colleague robert chesney and the s word, short

history of american tradition, socialism and you might also look up another book called the genius of him preach met, founder's cure for. so, there you go. these gentlemen have been talking about these issues for a long time, so let me go to the questions. wouldn't you know it my printer did not work this morning. >> you kids with your cell phone. >> could be my grandkids picked the title of the session this morning is: politics, where do we go from here? we are living in strange and divisive times. i don't think any of us are students of the politics. might suspect high school. my interests have seen anything like it. i think our panel has a great level of expertise. let me start with you, john, if you would.

in your book people-- "people get ready" you reflect on the economic conditions created by the rapidly advancing technology and automation, cause a reduction in jobs and a major factor in how politics are conducted, social media in particular. in the 2016 election senator sanders and donald trump appeared at least to appeal to a similar angst in the population of economic and social conditions here can you talk bit about this, john? give a short take on the similarities of the two candidates, sanders and trump and why trump's vision of the solution seems to prevail even though he did not win the popular vote. why did they attract in some ways a similar anger in the population and why did trump when? >> thank you, congressman, for putting every single issue on the table in a single question. well done. >> that's what congressman do. >> thanks to everyone for being

here. thanks also to c-span two taking this beyond arizona and around the country. too young to be one of my heroes, but certainly someone who i have immense reverence for the question is a great one and i will make it very simple. people ask it all the time. the answer is there are two-- there are no two people more different in the history of humanity than donald trump and bernie sanders. they are fundamentally and totally different. they believe different things. they are absolutely at odds with one another on every single issue. i mean, you just cannot even-- even in places where people think they agree there are fundamental differences. why do i keep getting asked that question? because in incredibly unstable

moments in history in those moments of radical transformation and transition the middle doesn't work. those who advocate for a status quo who say i just wanted to keep going this way and we will tinker around the edges does not work and so those who propose alternative visions who say we got a go this way or that way, or amplified. they are heard more and embraced more. in 2016, by the way it was the worst campaign in the history of humankind. i say that suddenly. i don't want to overplay it. 1800 was really bad and 1876 was a disaster. imf for storing a presidential elections and i can take you to everyone, but this one stood out and the reason it did was the same reason the previous worst

election in the history of the united states, 1856, which none of you paid any attention to, when james buchanan was elected president it was a election that should've been about slavery and the issues dividing the country in the end result is we had four years of not dealing with the fundamental issues and things got worse and worse and the results were relatively evident in history. the reason 2016 was horrible is because we didn't talk at the fundamental issues. we were 30 years until globalization trend, 20 years into an automation pattern, 2530 years into a digital transformation these things are changing every aspect of our lives, everything is different and everything will be more different. we are at best 10, 15% into this revolution can we are only beginning and already none of us have seen our children's faces in years because they are buried in these phones.

so, in this moment when everything changes so radically we know by every logical analysis that the jobs that we do that our children do and grandchildren do will not just be radically changed, but in many cases nonexistent in 30 years from now. its reality. we can't change and should not deny it. unfortunately, we also aren't discussing it, so we are discussing what comes next. bernie sanders and donald trump are two sides of the same moment, not the same coin. bernie sanders attracted a massive support level from young people, people under 30 and in some states he was getting 82% of the vote from young people under 30 and you're like how do you do that. it's like north korea turnout level. there was a reason for its. of the reason is because young people grew up marinated in new technology and they know exactly where we are headed to do they

that their job prospects are limited and they will spend a huge fortune on education and that they will have a hard time paying for an hard time getting a job. this is reality. they know they are being forced into a big economy where they will drive uber cars and rent out the back room of their apartment on air b&b and they realize there is no way to get sufficient benefits, educational or possibilities out of this. so, when bernie sanders came forward and offered their -- them a social democratic vision they said yeah, that sounds good. i would like to re-create a hellhole like denmark. like to experience the horrors of norway. it was a very appealing message and it went over very well with a moment of uncertainty-- uncertainty. donald trump spoke to people who were older and had been through the battering of this transformation, the

industrialization, shifting jobs, losing hope and opportunity and piling up debt and what he said to them was something that was different. they won't give you social welfare states. i'm going to take you back in history. amazing thing. he literally promised time travel. his optative word was again, make america great again. you could fill in the blank as to which date, 1954, 1854, you could pick in the fact of the matter is people who committed to trump and this is the bulk of what i will say about this, people who'd committed to trump or desperate and scared. they are not the poorest people, by the way. middle class people fearing becoming poor, fearing a future where they fall down an economic ladder and they don't want to do it. so, at-- donald trump is the easiest cheapest stun in a moment to tell them it's all their fault. it's not the fault of the times even.

the problem is some immigrant from someplace else that does not look like you are practiced the same religion as you and he played it out blame against a promise of restoration of economic stability just far enough to get 46% of the vote while 54% of people did not vote for him. unfortunately, we have an electorate system in this country that allows the loser to become the winner and we will be talking about him for a while. >> david, would you like to follow up claimant i would rather just sit and listen to john talk. on a couple things from my perspective. one of the titles of one of my books is "when pride still mattered". the book is about the fallacy of the innocent past. when i was listening to donald trump this year i was thinking very much about that fallacy.

make america great again for who were so many african-americans, women, latinos, i mean, you can go on and on about people who would not want to go back to that past. another thing was i think on a psychological level most human beings can be moved it to their better instinct or their worst instinct and that's one of the ways you can explain people who put voted for barack obama and then donald trump. someone can tap into their better instincts in a moment and have that appeal and then later someone can tap into their worst instincts and move them in a different direction so i think there are people-- many people fell into that category. i also think that you can never underestimate their rule of race in america. it's always been the american dilemma and sadly might always be, so you look at donald trump

in michigan and you think george wallace 1968 and so i think that's always a factor and was an important factor in donald trump's rise that he was not afraid of dog whistles not even dog whistles this time, just plain old whistles. fear factor goes to something idea within my book on detroit in that is often times there are people who see the future and we just don't listen to them. walter reuther, head of the united automobile workers in the 1940s, 50s and 60s and by the time of my book of 1963 he was obsessed of what automation would do to america. also, what-- how-- what the transformation of energy was going to do to america and how the need was therefore small cars. he proposed the big three automakers get together as they

had during world war ii and do the same thing for the auto industry. of course, the auto industry had no interest in that and no interest in what he was talking about and how they had to protect the workers and figure out ways that automation could improve the lives of the working class as opposed to destroy the lives of the working class. in all three of those ways i think they sort of out onto a john was saying about this election. >> before you jump in, it is in our book, i mean, the thing is this is one of the lost histories is that the labor movements in this country actually tried to figure out how to keep the jobs and the corporations told them no. >> i would just like to ask if you would go further. this is an extremely good book because it deals with the cultural aspect of the 60s, mid to late 60s in detroit which were reflected in the country, what lessons can we

draw today from economic collapse of what was incredible city? was it the largest municipal bankruptcy we have ever had this country at that point? >> yes. >> tell us about what's going on today with economic conditions and the leadership that we had or lack of leadership. >> first volume have to break through the mythology. the mythology of the fall of detroit is that his fall was caused by corrupt visible government, too much tension in the-- what happened to detroit in 1967, the riots or rebellion or whatever you want to cause it , that those three factors are what led to detroit's demise. the point in my book that takes place in 1963, four years before the riots is that all the structural problems were there.

detroit was already on its way to collapse and that's the reasons that had to do with lack of foresight by corporate america, by the government and to a certain extent by the people, so all of those are in some sense preventable and in some larger way they are difficult to deal with and every urban center in america really needs to help the whole country and, i mean, you did not even hear any discussion about the cities of america in this election. in 1963 what you had was a one company town essentially which was the automobile and the big three automakers had turned their back on detroit. both physically spreading out, which is perhaps inevitable, but more importantly psychologically

moving away from detroit. this goes way back to henry ford , the founder of ford motor company who hated cities. some of you probably visited greenfield village in dearborn. it's a pastoral idol, a myth of what america-- what he wanted america to be. so, there was always this sort of ironic that any city sensibility at least out ford motor company which they have come to regret, so the automakers didn't realize they needed this a vibrant heart and soul of the city of the people who made the cars to keep it alive. secondly, like so many other cities the urban shopping around it just created a new surround of cities so that there was no way the downtown could survive that. malls on all four side of the cities.

freeways absolutely destroyed detroit as they did certain parts of chicago and other major industrial centers. they completely demolished and the devastated the historic african-american section of detroit, black bondman paradise valley with the chrysler freeway freight through that. one of the most unforgettable moments when i was doing the research was interviewing a minister whose church, reverend hood whose church was in the way of the chrysler freeway and he showed me the map these city planners had put up to explain what would be torn down in the map stood not include any black churches, so their air so many ways of understanding what community is and what it means to keep this country live. >> thank you. let me turn to another aspect of all of this because in both of

your books you describe in vietnam book and the detroit book, david, and your most recent book, john, that we need citizens movement. that people need to rise up if you will and take their government back, take the country back in the people we need to take it back from other corporations and other entities that control what we hear and cn how politics are run. so, i guess the question i have is the topic is where do we go from here? do you see what's happening today as a way that we might actually change the way the country is managed? no matter who is in charge that they can't really do the things many of us i think don't want them to do? you know, i was a student here at the university during the vietnam war and i was part of the antiwar movement, part of the young democrats at the time and i thought in some ways it was a selfish movement even though it was a righteous

movement. most of us involved were students that would be drafted, so we had a vested personal interests. i see something different today. we have a grassroots movement, organic movement that has really rise up in the most incredible way with the marches and protests, neighborhood groups, people in one street that are getting together on a saturday. you want to do something, come talk to us about it. there is something different about this and my question is can be sustained? what do you think can come of this? of do you think it's sustainable? >> once again, congressman, you have placed every issue on the table in a single question. brilliantly done. i will try not to do the dishonest guest on panel trick of picking their favorite part. >> i will do that. [laughter]

>> what a team these guys are. >> we do come from the same place. i will do the detroit thing ending our book we didn't set out to set this panel up well when writing the book, but as it turned out we have a lot of detroit in our book and one of the things we focused on is the response of the power and i always use the term power. i think it's a silly to try and divide up government and corporations and wealth. there is power. there are those people that come together in all sorts of ways to make things happen for those that are already rich and they get to become a lot richer. look at the republican proposal for reforming obamacare and you see power and place powers response to detroit's problem was to say, you know what the problem in detroit is, democracy great big mess. they keep electing the wrong people and so we will take detroit over.

we are literally going to appoint someone to kind of run everything. they can still have elections if they want. they did this in flint, also by the way. you can have elections if you want and you can have meetings and stuff like that, but someone else will control the budget make the calls and decisions will be made on behalf of power, not on behalf of the community. i think detroit is a metaphor for the crisis that we entered in the last maybe eight, 10 years. these things did not happen-- we entered into a time where respect for democracy itself began to diminish rapidly. i would suggest that the supreme court's decision in the citizens united case in 2010, summed this thing up because the supreme court of the us said you know, if you're a multinational corporation and really rich and you want to flood an election with money that is cool.

if someone else doesn't have that money, well, that's just the way it works. the end result is we have graded a situation in this country now where our elections even if you have someone like donald trump that did not spend as much money is either defined by a celebrity or money. if you are a billionaire celebrity maybe you don't have to spend as much money and buy a media system that has decayed to such an extent that its primary modification is to eclipse the ratings. you have wonderful brilliant people at the "washington post" and other cases that supper and sweat and agonized to put out great stories. we have great journalists in the game, but overall our media system is eclipsed with the grading based rate the bottom against this money and none of it sustained or encourages democratic participation. so, maybe we need a donald trump i'm not saying this comfortably or happily or glibly.

maybe we need the shock that comes when a system decays to the point where donald trump becomes president of the united states of america because at that point an awful lot of people wake up and say, it's not going to be the media or the democratic party wore some-- is someone far away that will lead me out of this. on going to have to do it myself. the interesting thing is that if we look back in the history of movements in this country and we write about this in the book, the history of movements in this country is when people are pushed to a place where they recognize that they will have to do it. the civil rights movement didn't start when white people from up north came south to the civil rights movement got its kickstart when african-american soldiers came back from world war ii and they had fought and suffered for their country and then they were could not vote or drink out of the same water fountain. they said this is change. the war movement was

self-centered horrible people who didn't want to go die in an unnecessary war and there is nothing wrong with that, by the way, so as a result i think the great mass of americans, 54% majority and other folks including some trump backers have been pushed to a place where they have to recognize it's their job. they have to lead us out of the wilderness and i will sum it up with my favorite quote from any politician ever, the guy who never won an election except city clerk in terre haute or county clerk at think it, eugene victor and eugene victor deb when someone said you are the greatest smartest guy, socialist candidate for president 1920, tell us what to do and he said if i could lead you into paradise i wouldn't because if i could lead un someone else could lead to out pick the fact of the matter is we have reached that moment where you folks are going

to have to lead us into paradise and the wonderful thing about it is in the smallest towns and biggest cities across the country there is this a glorious resistance and it is beautiful and it is good and it is stronger than all of the failures of our media and our politics. >> david. >> the next governor of wisconsin. [laughter] >> will you be running on the socialist ticket? >> what's that? >> will you be running on the socialist ticket? >> socialist party has a pretty good base. ima wisconsin progressive and as a wisconsin progressive i have no place in either political party because as always with wisconsin we like in our politics and everything else to feel superior. >> because you are. david? >> i would say that every

political movement is a combination of idealism and self-interest. that was definitely true of the antiwar movement, as you said. it was the draft, the fire that fueled it so that every day people of my generation, young men of my generation had to think about what would we do if we were drafted. would we go to jail? when we joined the national guard and go fight in a war we can believe in? our girlfriends had to deal with that. our mothers and fathers-- it was something that combined idealism with opposing a war with self interest of what i do and that certainly was no clearer combination of those two in a positive sense than the civil rights movement. of course, the self interest was we wanted to be treated as human beings. the idealism is every human should be treated that way.

i think that you starting to see that combination of idealism and self-interest in so many ways today. i'm teaching a course this semester at vanderbilt on political biography and it's full of these incredibly bright young women and many of them wrote essays for me about how they felt after hillary lost. the one that was the most powerful was how the hillary tragedy was what her generation of young women needed to wake them up to what their mothers and their grandmother's had already endured and so i think it's another variation of john saying we needed trump. it's a hard thing to say, but the other thing is that history doesn't repeat itself, but there are always lessons to be learned from history and history offers

you angles into the present and so when you are dealing with the antiwar movement in particular of the 1960s it was a very sexist movement. any woman will tell you that. there was an unfortunate split in the late 60s between the civil rights movement, black power movement in the antiwar movement and i think that in many ways there's an opportunity now in 2017, to learn those lessons of all that had create a movement that does have a broader base. there are always the dangers of fascism, but the issues are so important and obvious now that if the people keep their eye on that it can creative movement that transcends any of those of the 60s. >> i was observing the number of people and we talked about this before the session who were decided to run for office in 2016, basically two candidates

on the democratic side running for the seat i lost. right now they're probably six or seven people. will they all get through the process? probably not, but that's amazing when you think about it for an incumbent who has a gazillion dollars and all the money the party can race for her with six or seven people willing to take it on and it's tough. i wanted to finish with one question and we will open it up for the audience to ask their questions. a lot has been said about trump controlling the media through his own medium which is reader universe and it's very powerful. obviously, it works. it has worked here do you see a new role or different role for the media then we have historically seen because in some ways print media has been losing subscribers, but i think there is a change. of the "washington post", "new york times" in particular are

doing an incredible job of investigative reporting. we see things in there that we need to delve, so what you think the role of the media is going toward because on any given day a tweet storm can throw 10 shiny objects in the year and you face-- chasing them. what you do about that? i do get back to focusing on what's being done on what's being tweeted about? >> well, won't do better than david did tonight to go or a night in a half ago, whatever when he did his keynote for this book festival and without ever mentioning our current president discussed the term enemy of the people and acknowledged that if that's what we are going to call it that's what we will be. in fact, we are not the enemy of the people at all. we are the folks who try as journalists to keep alive now core promise of the american

experiment, which is that if we give people the information they need they will be able to use it to govern themselves. that's what made us different than kings. a lovely woman up here is grimacing and saying i don't know i have seen son on the other people in this country and i'm not very impressed with them , but the fact of the matter is i will always hold engine oil from always holds to the ideal-- i did that if you get information to people and you have analysis and thinking it works. now, our crisis in america is that for about 100 years we relied on the daily newspaper to create a newsroom and every community of any size, even smaller towns that went out and actually tried to maintain this base. didn't always do it right and i have yet to see the correction on the vietnam war, but in most papers the fact of the matter is that by and large there was this effort.

newspapers are dying. they are disappearing and eight are shreds of themselves. nothing in the broadcast or digital universe and that includes all of twitter, facebook all of the internet, every place you want to go has begun to re-create a newsroom, so we are in a voice in that voice is the previously referenced power. power has figured out how to produce fake news. power has figured out how to go directly via twitter. power has figured out all sorts of ways to communicate with people, but the most important and tragic thing is that power has figured out how to take what remains of those newsrooms and make them respond to the tweets and the facebook posts and the fake news, if you will. we are spending so much time trying to fact check or politifact things, hit politifact.

not hating the people that do it. a levitt. i use it all the time, but i hate the reality that exists that we had to create an entity literally to keep up with all of the life and so much of what we do is that so we are not pushing the discourse forward into any cases. we are literally trying to catch up and what will have to happen is that journalism is going to radically change. it's going to become something different. it will operate on different platforms. the most important thing about it is, the most important thing happening now with a lot of journalists is that people are actually stepping up and say i have a personal responsibility to get to the truth. not as part of an institution, but i'm going to take that risk and a step up and do it and i love what-- the "washington post" has been doing. they have gone beyond the call

of duty. these are late night and early morning and then going on tv to spread the word and doing incredible work and i can get matters. rachel maddow, you know, i mean, i know people have all the different impressions, but when she takes that first 20 minutes of the show and it's long and detailed and that she takes some topics that 20 newspapers have been writing about and 15 magazines and senators asking questions and she boils it down into something that makes sense. basswood journalism is supposed to do. we are supposed to take this massive information, come through it and give you what you need in the fact of the matter is too often we fail. i think just the citizens are rising up your journalism is rising up and it will be on different platforms. i look forward to the future because i don't think it's a business anymore. i think journalism is returning

to what it has always needed to be, which is a mission on behalf of democracy itself. >> no reporter i know ever got into the business as a business. you know, the day after the election i was in the "washington post" and i saw our editor who's a brilliant editor and i said, man, what he going to do in this new world of trump presidency and his four word response was the only response i wanted to hear and he said, just do our job. the post has done that job in a way that i'm incredibly proud of and of the "new york times". but, have to say that there are

times in history where the press has not done its job, many times. vietnam was one of those. the iraq war was one of those, the mccarthy era was one of those, but the press has searched for the truth and it's essential for america democracy, but it's not the end. watergate, you know, the brilliant work on watergate, but that's not what led to the impeachment of richard nixon. it needed the government to find the courts to realize what their role was. at this point in our current situation we have the courts to a certain extent, who knows what congress is doing and thinking, i mean, at this point basically the republican establishment has made-- it's like damn yankees, they made a deal with the devil to get what they wanted and knowing what they were putting

up with, perhaps. so, the press cannot change-- the press can only do what it does and do it as well as they can. i think it's starting to do that again in this era, but it takes more than that. it takes you. to change the government so that this can get back. >> the journalism work being done today is amazing. you are right about how thin the papers are, but i read the "washington post" and "new york times" online and get the sunday times which i read all week, i mean, these are really papers with incredible integrity even though they can make mistakes in the past. we need to support journalism to do that work. >> let me say one more thing. every reporter i know has made mistakes in their career, but they don't make them mistakes as lies as outright lies. they are just human and make mistakes and there's a huge

difference between what is fake news and what happens to be inaccurate news and that's enormously important. >> could you line up on either side of the isles. we have a microphone here and here and if you could make your question a question and not a discourse. we will get more questions that way. there's another microphone over here if you would like to come down this side. we have about 15 minutes and we will take your questions. let's go to this gentleman over here. >> who do you see emerging as the real leaders of the democratic party and who would be someone that would be running for president in 2020? also, do you think donald trump for whatever reason will finish out the four years? >> john is tossing it to david. >> of course, we can't answer

that last question, i mean, we have all been wrong about it from the beginning, so to say anything would be stupid. i'm not even going to answer that part. >> all do the stupid thing. >> in terms of whom i be therein 2020, unbelievable. we are old. in zero, john and i both come out of wisconsin where there has been a real dearth of democratic talent over the last generation, which has heard the stake court of it. i think you are starting to see nationally another generation come up, but at this point in 2004 barack obama had not given his speech in boston yet. so, you had never heard of him.

it could be someone that we don't know yet in 2020. maybe that would be good. i covered the clintons for decades and i think they stole to the growth of the democratic party with all of their talents and flaws. i think that hillary they share made cautious decisions and was totally not open to the changing world in a way that she should have been and that hurt the party as well, so i hope it's someone completely new, but i don't know who that would be ranging from maybe the new dnc chairman, maybe cory booker and mean who knows. am not sure, but i hope it's someone fresh. >> elizabeth warren, maybe. >> i will do the stupid thing and say donald trump will

probably-- not certainly finish his term. i say that based on science, not on speculation to that is that presidents generally finish their term, i mean, that is the simple reality especially when they start with commerce on their side. the determinate factor will not be all of the talk about russia or scandals or all of these other factors. the factor will be the election of 2018. if it becomes evident even before that, remember nixon stepped down before the 1974 election because he knew what was coming and if it becomes evident going into the 2010 election that the democratic party in this phrase is never associated with it, has its act together, then donald trump is very vulnerable and he is vulnerable to the most ingenious -- besting our founders

created which is impeachment, fabulous tool greeted with a wide range of operations for limitation and can be used against buys president and cabinet members as well. you could actually see something happen. it won't happen without the political reality, so those of you that want to see an end to donald trump's presidency and i want to cemetery everyone, but those that do understand you are that essential factors in that, not some journalist and not some politician and finally, with regards to 2020, i am so ready for a woman president. i mean, i think it's getting to the point of absurdity, so right there on the side of women like he was the, but i would also suggest we have got to break our washington centric pattern end of session with people that are in the senate or house and start looking elsewhere and i would start looking at the mayors of big cities across this country some of whom are innovative and

way ahead of the folks in washington. it's interesting that we keep saying where's the resistance to trump. it's in the cities. the cities are doing these exciting things pushing back and yet we never put mayors up as potential candidates for presence of the us. there are a lot of very impressive women mayors. >> including the mayor of nashville, megan barry. >> and a woman mayor in washington dc and if we had to let a guy through, eric garcetti in la. >> you have probably heard this before, will rogers said i don't belong to an organized party, the democrat. there's a lot of truth in that. to this lady. >> recently i read an article that literally scared the heck out of me about robert mercer a computer scientist billionaire and his organization cambridge analytic and basically the

micro- messaging they did around mean hired by trying to do these very targeted, street by street messages using big data to see what would draw someone in and i'm wondering how do we create that community newsroom when you have big data back and almost house by house demographic by demographic change the messages we are hearing to draw us out to either vote or not vote? >> i will offer good news. the good news is that some of those claims have been debunked. the cambridge analytics may have claimed they were, pushing more than they did. there's a good "new york times" piece that put it in perspective. with that said, everything they're talking about about is where we are headed. that's one of the things our book is about. you will be able to target people literally into their house and give you a message that is directed to you as a voter. you know who innovated on some of this was barack obama. his fundraising was based on

getting to the people directly at the heart of what they were concerned about, so this is a part of our politics we have to be incredibly cautious about. it's very dangerous. the one core thing i will tell you on all of this is and i cannot-- andrew sullivan wrote about this recently. we have got to put our phones down. i'm not kidding. we have got to put them down and it's not that i don't use it constantly, but i love you for coming out physically today and being in this room. we are having a conversation that is about big issues and big topic sent we are trying to answer questions and asked the way to respond to big data. it is with big citizenship. >> david, you have a comment? >> yeah, i do. i think technology-- i used to believe technology was neutral and could be used for better or worse.

that sort of use of technology is starting to scare me more than it used to. i a-- i am glad john said that because i'm a radical on freedom of speech and i think it's incredibly important to come out and listen to everyone. this is a little unpopular, but and i don't want to make too much of it because it's what fox news lives off of, but the treatment of charles murray in vermont was unfortunate. you have to let people speak. the matter what they are saying. on borderline hate speech, but he said-- he's an intellectual and you might disagree, but it's incredibly important for us as journalists and firm believers in freedom of speech to make that just crystal clear that we

can disagree, but you have to let people speak and you have forms where they can speak without being intimidated. i think that really leads to a much healthier situation that prevents the manipulation by this technology. >> thank you. let's go to the woman with the woman's march t-shirt on, 15000 strong in tucson. >> historian nancy isenberg yesterday talked about there being a myth that americans historically have believed in equality and that is still going on today. i wondered if you could speak to that in terms of politics? where do we go from here? >> of course the myth was there at the beginning. the constitution doesn't offer he quality, i mean, america didn't offer a quality to women until early 1900s and

african-americans don't have it even today, so the belief in it is something that is essential to the assent of humanity and that's what america-- if you want to believe in america you have to believe in that to reach that goal. so, my feeling about where we are today is this a blip? is this a road bump on the gradual inevitable demographic, philosophical, political awakening wrecks i think you always have these cycles and in american history you see these cycles of moving backward and moving forward again, so as someone who is skeptical, but not cynical i believe there will

be a forward movement on equality in the future. >> quickly, i will just add a come from wisconsin where we refer to everyone as guys. it's true, you could up in that like a woman will get up in front of a group of women and say hey guys. so, i like to believe that thomas jefferson when he said all men are created equal actually included women in that. but, i do think on it breeze in stamford it was a bit screwed up at the start and may suggest something about the crisis. here's what martin luther king jr. said about it. he would get confronted with this issue and he would talk about the american experiment in the american dream and they would say, it wasn't really that great at the start you were sort of three fifths of a human according to the people that wrote the constitution and he said yeah, but i'd like to think they might have imagined me.

they might have imagined that as they are flawed and their weaknesses were finally addressed that we would get to that next place. this is a big deal. the founders of the america-- remember the smartest of them never thought the constitution was handed down written on stone to michele bachmann. this is not a common thought. the thought of the founding american experiment was jefferson and madison and john quincy adams said that if we lock you into this think this is all we can never be that we will take our pathology and hand them off to the coming generation and that is why they said things should be amended frequently. we amended it to give votes to women, amended it to give votes to african-american and get rid of the poll tax. we amended it to give 18 to 20 euros the right to vote. we amended the constitution many times in our biggest problem is a country has not continued to

amend the constitution of the us and say everyone has the right to vote and a right to have that vote counted in every state in this country no suppression, no voter id laws and we have not amended it and we have not amended it to say that every human being vote should matter more than a billionaire's dollar when we start to do that we will move towards equality. >> john, michele bachmann will not be very happy with you. >> i think she was aware of that >> this lady over here. >> angela bartow from madison, wisconsin. hi, guys. >> ww cheerleader, by the way. >> i just remember the terrible evening that the returns came in and i'm increasingly concerned that people get their news from

people who agree with them only. i have had friends cut me off on facebook. i would never do that to anyone because of political discourse. to resist his importance and maybe there are enough people to resist, but to resist you counter resist. what is the game plan to talk to one another again? what is the game plan to talk to people who vote against their own economic and at best interest? how have we lost the discussion about what is good public policy? why are our politics all about get power and maintain power at all costs? one minute. okay. i will stop. you said talk about a game plan here to repair some of the statement. >> you have got to go to every

corner of america. barack obama had the best answer to the question of why democrats did badly in rural areas and why he did well and he said i did this weird thing, i went there. the fact the matter is that you need to get in your car's and go to places where people who disagree with you are and start to talk to them. you don't have to-- people say you have to listen to people, no, you have honest conversations with people. you will not have that leaving in your same neighborhood all the time. ..

>> thank you all very much for being here. [inaudible conversations] >> host: and booktv's live coverage of the tucson festival of books continues. you've been listening to authors david maraniss and john nichols talk about poll -- politics. ask john thick olds -- john nichols will be joining us in just a second to take your phone calls. 202 is the area code, 748-8200