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tv   Panel Discussion on Politics  CSPAN  March 13, 2017 1:00am-2:01am EDT

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regional and global diplomacy in "everything under the heavens". and story of a u.s. air fighter pilot who was a prisoner of war in vietnam. and the argument that social media is creating new threats to democracy in #republic. and thoughts on the pentagon's advance defense research agency and how it has shaped technology for decades. ....
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>> welcome back to the campus of university of arizona and day two of the tucson festival of books. booktv is life aga we are in the gallagher theater and here is a quick look at the lineup in just a few minutes we will be discussing politics that followed by a call-in program with venetians in his book is called people get ready. you will hear the authors talk about civil rights in the supreme court, freedom of the press, immigrants and education and epidemics.
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all sorts of call-in programs today including one with maureen dowd of "the new york times." you can follow along with our programming and get behind the scenes pictures and videos on the site, facebook.com/booktv, insta graham @booktv and twitter@booktv. we are going live to the first author panel and this is on politics. i think i see many of the faces we have seen at similar panels in the previous years. welcome to the ninth annual, can you believe the ninth annual festival ofestival of the books. it is incredible to have such
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speakers and authors coming from all over the country. my name is ron barber and i will be the moderator this morning. [applause] [cheering] thank you. you're very kind. i want to thank cox communication for sponsoring the venue and mr. david marinss is appearing with the star and is sponsored by cindy and build. please give a round for ourne sponsors. >> our special will last for about an hour and immediately following the session, the authors will go to the book signing tent. mr. nichols will be a little delay today that will be signing his books for you. [laughter]. >> which will increase the value. [laughter] it's th the university of arizoa
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bookstore tent in the mall. 141. you can buy books there of course and mr. nichols immediately after the session he will be 20 or 30 minutes late for that. we hope you are enjoying thehe festival. how many of you have been here once before, twice before, three times? four, five, how many of you have been here nine times? it's good to see i that books ad literature is back. if you enjoy the festival which you do because you keep coming back we would like to invite you to become a friend of the festival.nd it is one of the only nonprofit book festivals in the country.. i was unaware of that. and you know that the money that's raised -- [applause] the money raised goes to charity
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and gets a lot of support. so, if you want to be a friend and contribute financially, we would like you to text to 520-214-book or 210-214-2665 and there is a sign at the front of the room. please, do that. it's simple and you can make a small contribution to support the festival today and in the future. we would like you to turn off your cell phones so that we can have uninterrupted conversations this morning. let me tell you a little bit about who is with us today. first of all, sitting next to ms is david maraniss. did i get it right? >> i enjoy getting my name is pronounced. >> okay i got it now.
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he told me ten times before. short-term memory loss. it must be politics. he's the associate editor for the "washington post" and winner of numerous journalism awards for writing including winningr the pulitzer for the nationall reporting and 93 for his coverage of bill clinton's presidential campaign. he also shared a pulitzer with other writers of the post for their writing on the virginiaoni tech shooting into some of us here can certainly relate to that sad tragic event. he also writes about sports, not just politics. and he's a fan of music i found out. if you go to spot if i, he has put a list of his favorite tunes on the spot if i did sort of mentioned a lot in the book we are going to talk about this morning. smokey robinson and all that. so if you are into that comeme it's a good place to go for
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information about his favorite list of sounds.d so, david has written many books. we are going to talk about a few of them this morning. one is the most recent 2015. one is a detroit city story and the second one which he turned me onto just recently i haven't read yet but i will come at a marc, they marchin the sunlight, vietnam and america. i haven't gotten far into this but it's a great read for those of you that are interested in the period of history. t so, those are two of them. he's also written barack obama, the story of 2013. 2 and one i like that i haven't seen yet but i read it when i was looking at his biography, he co-authored with michael. lookin i haven't read it but i'm fascinated by the title. the title is tell him to shut
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up. wouldn't we all like to do that. [applause]. it was on sale for $2. [laughter] so obviously we have david who is going to talk about his book and the condition of the country today politically. john nichols i'm sure you've seen before on the panel i moderated last year and the year before. currently he's the washington correspondent for the nation and associate editor of the capital times. you've probably seen him on various talk shows, msnbc inin particular and others. and very high demand in 2016 i saw him a lot more because then state he represents and comes from. and this is an interesting bit of trivia. he comes here not only for the panel of the books. he appeared in the documentary that i think is relevant today shown in 2004 orwell rolls in
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his grave. [laughter] john was present in 2004 when he signed ont on to that and it cos topics that we are talking about today.today, so so, corporate ownership of thee media, the election wa that was decided by the sprinkler, bush beat gore. how presidential elections can be manipulated by foreign governments, the ronald reagan elec government which delayed the release of the hostages until today of the inauguration. it isn't new. looking at it today, but it's not new. so, there's a number of books and the most recent is this one. it's called "people get ready: the fight against a joblesst economy and a citizenless democracy." he's also written about how the complex is destroying america.
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he wrote both of those with hiss colleague and the short history of american tradition of socialism and you might also want to look up another book i think is relevant today or hopefully it will be. it's called the genius of impeachment, the founders cure for ro royal. [applause] these gentlemen have been talking about these issues for a long time so that we go to the questions. wouldn't you know with my printer didn't work this morning.. [inaudible] it could be my grandkids. they messed with it. the title of the session is politics where do we go from here. we could take a day or more to talk about that. it's obvious we are living in strange divisive times. i don't think any of us are students of politics. mine goes back to high school,
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my interests haven't seen anything like it. i think our panel this morning has a great level of expertise to talk about what we are facing to let me start with you, john. in the book, "people get ready," you reflect on the economicge conditions that have beente created by the rapidly advancing technology and automation that cause a reduction in jobs and also has been a major factor in how politics are conducting social media in particular. in the 2016 election, senator sanders and donald trump appear at least to appeal to a similar angst in the populatiointerest r economic and social conditions. could you talk a little bit about this and please give us your take on the similarities of the two candidates sanders and trump and why the solution seems to prevail even though he didn't win the popular vote, why do you think they attracted in some s ways a similar anger in the population and why did he win?
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>> thank you, congressman for putting every single issue on the table in one single question. [laughter] well done. [laughter] thanks everyone for being here and to my good friends and c-span for taking this around the country. i'm honored to be here. he's too young to be one of my heroes but certainly somebody io had a great reference for. the question is great and i will make it simple. it's the number one question i asked on this book. the answer is there are no two people more different in the history of humanity -- [laughter] and van 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.
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even places where people think they agree there's fundamental differences. so, why do i keep getting askedi this question? because in incredibly unstable moments in history come in those moments of radical transformation in transition, the middle doesn't work. those who advocate for a status quo in to say i just want to keep going this way and we will tinker around the edges doesn't work and so those that proposess alternative visions to say we've got to go this way or that way are amplified.re heard more and they are heard more and embraced more. and in 2016, by the way, the worst campaign in the history of humankind. and i say that subtly. i don't want to overplay it. [laughter] 1800 was really bad. and 1876 was a disaster.
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i can take you through every one, but this one stood out and the reason is the same reason that the previous worst election in the history of the 18th 56, which none of you paid anyny of you attention to, 1856 james buchanan was elected and it should have been about slavery and the issues dividing the country. at 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 it was horrible as thebutthey didn't talk about the fundamental issues. they were 30 years into a globalization trend and we are 20 years into an automation pattern. 25, 30 years into the digital transformation. these things are changing every aspect of our lives. everything is different and everything will be more different. ten to 15% into this revolution.
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we are only beginning and already, none of us have seen our children's faces in years because they are buried in the these. and so, in this moment whenes everything is changing so dramatically, we know why every logical analysis that the jobs that we do, that our children do and grandchildren do will be in many cases nonexistent 30 years from now. it's what automation will do. it's reality. we can't change it and we shouldn't deny it. unfortunately, we also are not discussing it we are not discussing what comes next. so bernie sanders figure two sides of the coin. bernie sanders attracted a massive support level from young people under 30. in some states he was getting ev 2% of the vote. you're like how do you do that, that's like a north korea turnout level.level. and there is a reason for it.
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the reason is because young people grew up marinated in the technology. they know where we are headed and that their job prospects are limited and they will spend then huge fortune on education and they will have a hard time paying for it and getting a job. this is a reality that can't be denied. they will be forced into an economy where they will drive cars and print out the backroom of their apartment and they realized there's no way you're b going to get sufficient benefit, education or possibilities out of this. when so, when bernie sanders came forward and offer to vision, they said yes. that sounds really good. i would like to re-create a hellhole like denmark. [laughter] to experience the horrors of norway. [laughter] is a very appealing message and it went over very well in a moment of uncertainty you have a
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welfare state and some of those models they make a lot of sense. donald trump spoke to people that have been through the battering of the transformation shifting jobs, losing hope and opportunity. what he said to them was something that was very different i'm not going to give you a social welfare state or. guarantees. i'm going to take you back in history. it's amazing he literally promised time travel. his slogan was again. make america great again. you can fill in the blank, 1954, 1854. you can pick. the fact of the matter is people that committed to trump were desperate and scared. not all of them and they are not the poorest people by the way. these are middle-class people fearing becoming poorer during a future where they fought on the economic ladder and they don't a want to do it so donald trump did the easiest and cheapest
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stunned which is to tell them it's not their fault and it's not the fault of the times even. the problem is some immigrant from someplace else, somebody that doesn't look like you were practiced the same religion as you and he pleaded out against the promise of restoration of economic stability just far enough to get 46% of the vote while 54% saw through him and didn't vote. unfortunately we have a system in the country that allows the user to become the winner and so we will be talking about him for a while. >> what daviwithout david is a p on the.yo >> i love to hear john thought i would rather just sit here and listen. i would add a couple things inof my perspective one of the titles in the book is when pride still mattered and some people thought it was a literal invocation.
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in fact, the book is about the fallacy of the innocent past. so, when i was listening to donald trump this year, i was thinking very much about the fallacy of make america great again, for who? for so many african-americans,wn men, women, latinos. we can go on and on about people who wouldn't want to go back to the past. another thing was i think on a psychological level most human beings can be moved to the better instincts are worst instincts and that's one of the ways you can explain people that voted for barack obama and thend donald trump. somebody can tap into their better instincts in a moment and have to appeal and later somebodsomebody can't happen tor worst instincts and have the same and move them in a different direction, so i think there's a lot of people who fel into that category. i also think you can never underestimate the role of race
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in american life. it's always been the american dilemma and sadly it might always be. so you look at donald trump in michigan and think george wallace in 1968. i think that is always a factor and it was an important factor. he was not afraid of the dog whistlers. they were just plain old whistles. a third factor i would say goes to something i deal with in my book on detroit and that is often times, there are people who see the future but we don't listen to them. walter reuther was the head of the united automobile workers and 1940s, 50s and 60s and by the time of my book in 1963, he was obsessed with what automation was going to do to america.n and also, what the
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transformation of energy wasf going to do and how the need was there for small cars. he proposed that the automakers get together and do the same thing for the auto industry. of course the auto industry had no interest in that order what he was talking about and how they had to protect the workers and figure out ways automation could improve the lives of the working class as opposed to destroy the lives of the working class. so in all of those ways i think that they sort of add-o the sort he was saying about this.jo >> i just want to add the figures in the book. this is one of the lost histories. the labor movement in this country actually tried to figure out how to keep jobs and the corporations told them no. i would like to ask david to go little further.
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this deals with the cultural aspects of the 60s and mid-to late 60s in detroit which was reflected in the country at large. what do you think what lessons can we draw today from the economic collapse what was the largest municipal bankruptcy thabutwe've ever had in this coy at that point? >> tell us about what is going on today with the economic conditions and the leadership that we have for the lack of leadership that we have in the white house. >> first of all you would have to break through the mythology in the fall of detroit that it was caused by a corrupt municipal government and too much of a burden of pensions and what happened in detroit in 1967, the riots and rebellions or whatever you want to call us, thosit,those factors are what lo the demise.
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and in fact, th the point of my book that takes place in 1963, four years before the rise is all the structural problems were already there. detroit was already on its way to collapse and the reason had to do with lack of foresight and to a certain extent by the people. all o of those are in some sense preventable and they are difficult to deal with. every urban center in america needs to help the whole country. you don't even hear any discussion about the cities inar america in this election. again 1963, what you had is a one company town was the automobile and the automakers already turned their backs on
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detroit, both physically spreading out, which is perhaps but more importantly, psychologically moving away from detroit. this goes way back to henryy bak ford, the founder of the ford motor company who hated cities. some of you probably visited deerfield village. it is a pastoral idol of what he wanted america to be. and so there was always this sort of ironic sensibility at least in ford motor company that they have since come to regret. so, the automakers didn't realize that they needed this vibrant heart and soul of the city of the people that need peace cars to keep it alive.al second, like so many other cities, it created a noose around the city so there was no
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way that the downtown could survive with walls on all four sides of the cities and the freeway was absolutely destroyed as different parts of chicago and other major industrial centers. they completely demolished and devastated the historic african-american sections of detroit, blac black bottom and paradise valley.freight through one of the most unforgettable moments when i was doing the research was interviewing a minister whose church was in the way of the chrysler freeway and he showed me the maps that city planners have put up to explain what would be torn down and they didn't include any of the black churches. so, you know, so there are so many ways of understanding what community is and what it means
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to keep this country alive. >> let me turn to another aspect of all of this because in both of your books, you've described that we need a citizens movemen and people need to take their government back, take their country back to the corporatione and other entities thatta basically control what we hear and eat and how politics run and all that. the question i have 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 do the things many people would want us to do. i was a student here in the
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university and was part of the antiwar movement. and it was basically i thought a very selfish movement even though it was a righteous movement. most of us involved with it for students who were going to be drafted, so we had a vested personal interest. inte i wanted to comment i'm hoping it's something that isn't real and that is we have a grassroots movement that is rising up in the most incredible way the marchemarches and protests and neighborhood groups, people in just one next week i'm getting calls for them, want to do something come talk to us it's not organized by a party or an organization. there's something different about this and the question is can it be sustained. o what do you think can come of this and is it sustainable? >> once again, congressman, you placed every issue on the table in a single question. brilliantly done. i will try not to do thatof
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dishonest just picking their favorite parts. [laughter] with a team these guys are. >> we do come from the same place. >> i'm going to do with detroit. in our book we did not set outut to set up the panel when writinn the book that as it turned out, we have a lot of detroit in our book and one of the things weedi focus on is the response of power and i always used the term power. i think it is silly to try tod divide up the governmentrporatid corporations and their sour. those people come together in all sorts of ways to make things happen for those that areen already rich and they can become a lot more rich.ge look at the proposal for obamacare and use the power in place. the response to the problem was to say you know what the problem in detroit is, democracy.
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they keep electing the wrong people so we are going to take them over. we are literally going to appoint somebody to run everything. they can still have elections if they w they want. and they can have meetings and stuff like that but somebody else is going to control the budget and make the call and the decisions will be made on behalf of power, not on the community. i think that detroit is -- it is a metaphor for the crisis that we entered in the last eight or ten years. they didn't have been before ine america but we entered into a period where respect for democracy itself began to diminish rapidly. i would suggest the supreme court's decision in the citizens united case in 2010 summed this up because the supreme court of
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the united states said if you are a multinational corporation or somebody that is really rich and you want to plug one with money that is cool. and if somebody else doesn't have the money, that's just the way it works.the way it wor the result is we've created a situation in the country nows where even if you have something like donald trump didn't spendha as much as his opponent if you are a billionaire celebrity you maybe don't have to spend as much money.. and by the media system that ha decayed to such an extent the primary motivation are the ratings. you have wonderful brilliant people at the "washington post" and other places who literally suffer and sweat and agonized for a great story so we have great journalists still in the game that overall the media system is a ratings based race up against all this money and none of it encourages democratic
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participation. and so, maybe we needed donald trump. i'm not saying this happily but maybe we needed the shock that comes with a system that dk is 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 or somebody far away from me that is going to lead me out of this. i'm going to have to do it myself. the thing is if we look back in the history of movements and we do write about this in the. the book. the history of movements is when people are pushed to a place they recognize that they are going to have to do it. the civil rights movement didn't start when people from up northp and south. it got its kick start when african-american soldiers came back from world war ii and they had fought and suffered for and their country and then they were
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told they couldn't vote or drink from the same water fountain and they said this is doing to t change. the war movement was self-centered horrible people like ron -- [laughter] who didn't want to die in anssar unnecessary war. there's nothing wrong with that by the way. so as a result, i think that the great mass of americans said 54% and including some others have a been pushed to a place now where they have to recognize that it's their job. they have to lead us out of the wilderness. i will sum this up with my favorite quote.ugene victor deb eugene said when somebody said you're the greatesyou were the e smartest we've ever had, a candidate for president in 1920 come you're the best tell us what to do and he said if i can lead you into paradise, i wouldn't because if i could
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leave you in, somebody else could lead you out and the fact of the matter is we have reached that moment where you have to lead us into paradise and the wonderful thing about it is in the smallest towns in the biggest cities across this country, there is a glorious resistance and it is beautiful and it is good and stronger than all of the failures of our media and politics. [applause]nor of the next governor of wisconsin. [laughter] will you be running on the socialist ticket? [laughter]what's will you be running on the socialist ticket in wisconsin? [inaudible] [laughter] i am a wisconsin progressive and as a wisconsin progressive, i have no place in eitherla political party because as always with wisconsin, we like
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her politics and everything else to feel superior because you are. [laughter] >> i would say every political movement is a combination of idealism and self-interest. that was definitely true in the antiwar movement as you said it was the draft -- five years and fueled it so that everyday people of my generation, young men of my generation think about what would we do if we were drafted would we go to jail, what we joinebutwe joined the n, would we fight a wa in a war the didn't believe in. our girlfriends had to deal with that, our mothers and fathers. it's something that would combine the idealism of combining the war with the self-interest of what do i do and that certainly was no clear combination of those two in a positive sense was the civil rights movement where of course
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the self-interes self-interest o be treated as human beings and every human should be treated that way. so i think starting to see that combination of idealism and self-interest in so many ways i'm today. i'm teaching a course this semester on political biography. it's full of these incredibly bright young women that wrote essays for me about how they felt after hillary lost. the one that was the most powerful is how the tragedy is what her generation of young women needed, to wake them up to what their mothers and grandmothers had alreadyso i thk endured. [applause]nother variati it's another generation of saying we need to trump. it's a hard thing to say. but the other thing is history
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doesn't repeat itself but there are always lessons to be learned from history that offers angles into the present. when you are dealing with an antiwar movement in particular in the 1960s, it was a very se sexist movement. any woman will tell you that. there was a split in the late 60s between the civil rights movement and i think that in many ways there's an opportunity now in 2017 learning the lessons of that and creating a movement that does have a broad base. there's always the dangers that the issues are so important and obvious now that if people keep their eye on that come it can create a movement that transcends any of those.
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>> observing the number of people we talked about this before the session who were deciding to run for office in 2016 there were basically two candidates running for the seat i lost right now there's 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 that has a gazillion dollars in all the moneand all themoney that her pn for her for six or seven people willing to take it on and it's tough to do campaigns. i want to finish with a question then open up for a the audience to ask their questions. a lot has been said about donald trump controlling the media through his own media which is the twitter universe and it's very powerful. obviously it works. do you see a new role or a different role for the media that we have seen because in some ways the print media and
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particular has been losing prescribersubscribers. the "washington post" and "new york times" in particular i think they are doing an incredible job of investigative reporting.g. we are seeing things there we need to know. what do you think about the role of the media going forward? on any given day, a storm couldc have ten shiny objects and what do you do about that and how do you get back to focusing on what is being done as opposed to send out or both? >> i won't do better than david did two nights ago or a nightt and a half ago when he did his keynote for this book festival without ever mentioning the e current president who discussed the term enemy of the people and acknowledged if that's what we are going to call it, that is what we will be but we are not
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enemies of the people at all, we are the folks that try as journalists to keep that core promisthe corepromise of the amn experimentve n which is if we ge people the information they need, they will be able to use it to govern themselves. that is what made us different than the lovely woman appeared at his grimacing saying i don't know i've seen some of 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 in the journalism holds the idea if you get information to people and you get enough of it if works. the crisis in america is that for about 100 years we've relied owe relied onthe daily newspapea newsroom in every community of any size even smaller towns that went out and actually tried to maintain the state. it didn't always do it right.
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i have yet to see the correction on the vietnam war but in most papers the fact of the matter is by and large there was this effort. newspapers are dying. they are disappearing. nothing in the broadcast or digital universe and that includes all of twitter and facebook and every place you want to look has begun toiv re-create the newsroom so we are in a void and that is still by the previously referenced power that has figured out how to produce fake news and how to go directly to twitter and all sorts of ways to communicate with people. the most important and tragic thing is they figured out how to take what remains of those newsrooms and make them respond to the facebook posts and fake
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news if you will.h we spend so much time trying to fact check. i hate the fact, not the people that use it, i use it all the time, but we get to create an entity with literally to keep up with all the lies. so much of what's needed is that so we are not pushing the discourse forward. we are just trying to keep up. what is going to have to happen is that journalism is going toia radically change. it's going to become something different and it will operate on different platforms because it was never supposed to just be a newspaper or tv station but the most important thing about it is what is happening now people are stepping up saying i have a personal responsibility to get to the truth.
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i love what the folks have been doing. they've gone way beyond the call of duty. these are late nights and early spread the mornings. rachel -- [cheering] i know people have different impressions but when she takes that first 20 minutes of the show and its long and detailed and she takes some topic 20 newspapers have been writing about and people are trying to t communicate and she boils it down into something that makes sense, that is what journalism is supposed to do, take this massive information, combed through and give it what you need. you ne i think the citizens are rising up and journalism is rising up
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and it will be in all sorts of platforms. i look forward to the future because i don't think it is a business anymore. i think it is returning to itso always needed to be which is a mission on behalf of democracy itself. [applause] no reporter i know ever got into the business but the day after the election i was in the "washington post" and saw an editor who is a brilliant editor and i said what are you going to do in this world of a trump presidency. his response was the only response i wanted to hear. he said just do our job. they've done their job in a way that i am incredibly proud of.
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[applause] i have to say there are times in history when the press hasn't done its job.mes. vietnam was one of those, the mccarthy era was one of those. but the search for the truth is essential to the american democracy.y. but it's not the end. watergate, the post did a brilliant work that is and whatt what's led to the impeachment of richard nixon. they needed the government, the other two branches to finally realize what their role was and at this point in our currenturts situation, we have the chords to a certain extent. who knows what that congress'sn, leader thinking. at this point basically the
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republican establishment it's like the yankees, they made a deal with the devil to get what they wanted and knowing what they were putting up with, perhaps to get their. so, the press cannot change from the press can only do what it does and as well as it can and i think that it's starting to do that again but it takes more than that. to c to change the government for this to get back. >> but the work beinthat the woe today is amazing. you write about how thin papers are but i read "the new york times" online and get the sunday times which i'd read all week. these are papers with an incredible integrity though they've made mistakes in the past. we need to support journalists who do that work. >> every reporter i know has made mistakes in their career,
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they don't make the mistakes as wise. they are just humans that make mistakes and there is a difference between what is fake news and what happens to be inaccurate. that is an enormously important point. [applause] if you want to ask a question to you line up on either side of the i/o if we have a microphone here and here. if you could make your request in a question we will get to more questions that way. there is another one over here if you would like to come down the side. we have about 15 minutes we will take questions what's with this gentleman over here.an over >> who do you see emerging is the real leaders of the democratic party, and who would be someone that would be runninl for president in 2020 and also do you think donald trump forfi whatever reason will finish out in four years?
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-- [laughter]. of course we can't answer that last question. we've been wrong about it from the beginning. saying anything would be stupid so i'm not even going to answer that. in terms of who might be there in 2020 -- that is unbelievable. we are old. [laughter] john and i both come out of wisconsin where there's been democratic talent over the last, generation which has hurt the state quite a bit. i think you are starting to see nationally and other generation come up. but at this point, in 2004,
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barack obama hadn't given his speech in boston yet so you've never hear of him. it could be somebody we don't know yet.n maybe that would be good. i covered the clintons foror decades and i think they stunted the growth of the democratic ths party with all of their talents and flaws, i think that hillary this year made a cautious decisions and was totally not open to the changing world in the way she should have been and that hurts the party as well. so i hope that it is somebody new but i don't know who that would be. maybe it's the new chairman tom perez, maybe it is cory booker. who knows, but i hope it is somebody fresh. elizabeth warren may be. [laughter] maybe. laughter
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>> i >> i will do the stupid thing and say donald trump will probably come in not certainly, finish his term and i say that based on science, not speculation and that is theinish president's generally finish their terms and that is the reality starting with the congress on their side. the determinant factor will nott be all of the talk about russia or scandals were all 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 it would become evident going in to the 2018 election that the democratic party going into this phrase associated with it never has its act together. [laughter]
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than donald trump is very vulnerable and he is vulnerable to the most geniu genius tool tn created by the testing the founders created which was impeachment. it's a fabulous tool with a wide range of options for implementation and it can bege used against vice presidents and cabinet members as well. you can see something happenedd that it won'happen butit won't e political realities of those of you that want to see an end to the presidency you have to understand where the essential factors, not some journalists and not some politician. i am ready for a woman preside president. i air on the side of women like elizabeth warren but i would also suggest we have to break our washington centric patterns,
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start looking elsewhere and i would look at the mayors across the country some of who are incredibly innovative and waynnd ahead of the folks in washington. it's interesting we keep saying where's the resistance to trumpm it's in the cities doing all of these things pushing back and managing the situation yet we never put them up as potential candidates for president of the united states. there are a lot of very impressive winning mayors. >> there is a woman that is the mayor of washington, d.c. and if we let him out he is a pretty interesting guy said that is the answer to the question, the stupid part and the smart part. >> you've probably heard this id before. that's got to this leedy here please.en >> recently i read an article that scared the heck out of me
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and it was about a computer scientist billionaire and his organization.ic and basical basically the micro- messaging that he did and then being hired to do these targeted almostt street by street messages to see what would call someone in and i'm wondering how do we create that newsroom when you have big data that can almost house byby house demographic by demographic change the messages that we are hearing to draw us out to either vote or not vote. >> rival offered you some good news. some of those claims have been debunked. it looks like cambridgealytics e analytics claimed he were accomplishing more than they did. there's a good "new york times" piece that put it in perspecti perspective. that said, everything they are talking about is one of the things our book is about. the fact of the matter is they will be able to target people
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and give a message directed asge the voter. who innovated on some of this is barack obama. his fund raising was based on getting the people directly atct the heart of what they are concerned about so this is part of our politics and we have to be incredibly cautious about it. the one thing i will tell you on all of this is i cannot -- we have to put our phones down. i'm not kidding. we've got to put them down. [applause] it's not that i don't use it constantly. i am as bad as my kids that i love you for coming out physically today and being in this room. we are having a conversationon about the big issues and topics. that's the way to respond. it is with big citizenship. >> did you have a question? >> i do.
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i used t to believe technology s neutral and could be used for better or worse and that sort of use of technology is so orwellian that it's starting to scare me more than it used to. i'm glad john said that because i am a radical on freedom of speech and it's incredibly important to come out and listen to everybody. it's a little unpopular at this moment and i don't want to make too much of it because it is with fox news lives off of, but the treatment of the middlebury college in vermont was unfortunate. you have to let people speak. no matter what they are saying. borderline of hate speech.he but you might disagree with his findings while it is incredibly
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important for us as journalists and firm believers in freedom of speech to make it crystal clear that we can disagree but you have to let people speak and have forums where they can speak without being intimidated. and i think that leads to a healthier situation that prevents the manipulation by this technology. >> 15,000 strong in tucson.h [applause] yesterday a historian yesterday nancy isenberg talked about there being a myth that americans historically have believed in equality and that it's still going on today. and i wondered if you could speak to that in terms of politics where do we go from here. >> of course it was there at thn beginning.
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the constitution doesn't offer a quality. america doesn't offer equality to women until the early 19 hundreds and african-americans don't have it even today. but the belief is something that is special to the ascent ofa humanity and if you want to believe in america you have to believe in that and try to reach that goal. so my feeling about where we are today is is this a road bump on the gradual inevitable graphic philosophical, political awakening? i think you always have these cycles in american history you see the cycles of moving
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backward and forward again. so i asked someone who is skeptical but not cynical i believe that there will be a movement on the quality in the future. >> quickly i will just add i come from wisconsin where we refer to everybody as dies. no, it's true like a woman will get up in front of a group of women and say hey guys. so i'd like to believe thomas jefferson when he said all men are created equal include women. but i do think, i know it's a little screwed up at the start and it may suggest something about the crisis. here's what martin luther king jr. said about it because he would get confronted with thisis issue and talk about thethe amee american dream and they would t say it wasn't that great at the start, you were three fifths of the human according to the
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people that wrote the constitution at all these other issues and he said yeah but i like to think that they might have imagined that as theirhat s weaknesses were finally addressed that we would get to the next place and this is a big deal. the smartest of them never thought of the constitution was was handed down written on sto stone. the experiment was as jeffersonn and madison and others said if we lock you into this thing this is all we can ever be and we wil will take them and hand them off to the coming generation and that's why they said that it should be amended frequently. we amended to give the votes toe women and to get rid of the tax and to get 18 to 21-year-olds the right to vote in the vietnam
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era and amended the constitution many times. our deepest problem is driving towards equality we haven't continued to amend theto constitution of the united states of america to say everyone has a right to vote and have it counted in every state in this country, no voter id laws and we have not amended and to say that every human being's vote should matter more than a billionaire's daughter. when we do that then we will move towards the quality. >> michele bachmann isn't going to be very happy with you. b [laughter] >> i t >> this lady over here. [laughter] >> [inaudible] [laughter] i just remember the terrible evening the returns came in and
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i'm increasingly concerned that people get their news from people who agree with them onlym i've had friends cut me off on facebook. i would never do that to anybody because of a political discourse. to resist is important and maybe there's enough people to resist but folks will counter resist. what is the game plan to talk to one another again and to talk to people who vote against their own economic and best interest?o how have we lost the discussion about what's good public policy? why are the politics of about get power and maintain power. .. i will stop.

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