tv Public Affairs Events CSPAN October 18, 2016 4:00pm-6:01pm EDT
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c-span3 live today here at george mason university for a discussion about angry voters. and their impact on the presidential election and the political process. the discussion will be moderated by senior brookings fellow marvin calb. we'll be hearing from the authors of the pill ticks of resentment, about extremism in politics. and ross perot's running made. it's expected to get under way shortly.
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in "the new york times" obituary, they wrote the following. and i think as i quote this, think about, this is what she wrote 20 years ago. "the new york times" wrote, in that book she identified deep-seeded voter anger. fueled by an uncertain economy, cultural divisions, and disenchantment with government. as a potent force that politicians need to understand and harness. people hate government, she wrote, because they expect more than government can possibly deliver. particularly in this era of budget constraints. so in a sense, the book offered a preview of the current political environment. remember peter finch, flinging open the window in the movie "network" and screaming, i'm mad as hell and i'm not going to take it anymore, she wrote in her introduce. the question of the decade is,
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she continued, what happens now that the window has been opened. so again, think about that. 1996. just three weeks before she passed away last may, one of our colleagues visited with sue and marty at their georgetown townhome. they sat outside discussing the current presidential campaign. sue was unsurprised that the unfolding of events at that time. in fact, as i suspect we'll hear today from our keynote speaker and panelists, sue was well ahead of her time in recognizing the growing anger of the public toward our government, and politicians. she reminded marty and their guests that just as she correctly predicted, the nominee this year of the republican party, she also believed that the outcome of this election was not a foregone conclusion. sue came to mason in 1998 after a distinguished 20-year career at one of the other georges in
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town. george washington university. [ laughter ] in announcing her appointment, then president of george mason said, tolchen is one of the very best and respected scholars in her field. what he didn't say at the time was that the president of gw had just given sue the institution's top researcher award for the entire university. this was but one of the many awards that she received over the years, including a best book award by "business week" and by library journal, as well as the american society for public administration's award for the best lead article in public administration review. sue also was a fellow in the national academy of public administration, and she was particularly proud of the fact that her work has been cited in three separate supreme court decisions. kingsley haines, the founder of
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school policy, who recruited of sue to mason, said brings the skills of an outstanding teaching record together with her appreciation of the communication role needed by the civic intellectual in today's public policy arena. in many ways, sue was a pioneer. she was the first woman to be hired as a tenured full professor at the institute of public policy here at george mason university. she was in the first group of women to be admitted to the cosmos club. and she was the first woman to be named a university professor, our highest honor for faculty at george mason university. in many ways, women's issues were one of the central themes, not only of her personal life, but also of her research, and her scholarship. sue was founder and director of the washington institute for women in politics at mount
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vernon college, and she was the first to offer seminars and workshops on the practical and theoretical facets of women contemplating public life as a career. and several of her books explored the role of women in politics in government. but above all, sue was a teacher. her students, and i heard this many times as her colleague over the years, were her true passion. and that really was felt by her students who commented about this many, many times. and also, were invited to your home on many occasions at the end of the semester, and the students always appreciated that personal touch that sue gave to everybody. and certainly, the students were her passion, with the exception of her family in her life. every class she taught was a labor of love. she made a difference in so many lives. her memory not only lives on through her family and her
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writings, but also through the thousands of lives she touched over a long and productive career. so marty and karen, on behalf of all of sue-colleagues and students at mason, and for that matter at gw, mount vernon, drew, seton hall, brooklyn college and city college, thank you for sharing her life with all of us. she is one of those rare individuals who will continue to be a part of all of our lives and help each of us to excel at whatever we choose to do. finally, i want to recognize one of sue's docketral students. she put together's tribute to sue's work. bonny is just one example of many of how sue influenced all of our lives. bonny, thank you for all you've done to help us honor your mentor and your friend. bonny stabeal, will you please step forward? [ applause ]
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>> thank you so much to all of you for joining me here today to celebrate sue's life and legacy. it was my great honor to be her student. she was my dock tral dissertation chair. three years ago, sue received a lifetime achievement award from mount vernon college for her work as an educator with special emphasis in women's issues. and i had the honor of introducing her at that event. and the thing that brought a tear to her eye, though, the thing that she told me was most important to her was when i spoke about how meaningful having her as my professor was. she said that, you know, of course, we could talk at great length about her many accomplishments, she was a prolific author, she was a great scholar, she won many awards, she was on tv and radio. and she influenced policy outcomes. but she said that was most
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meaningful and important to her was her role as an educator and the way she touched students' lives, as mark just said. anyway, thank you for being here to share this event. i think she would be very proud to have you all here, our great panelists here. i would like to introduce martin tolchen. in addition to his most important accomplishment, which was marrying sue, most of you know, had a 40-year career at "the new york times," and then in retirement, started the hill, helped start politico, and also a senior scholar at the wilson center. some accomplishments in your own right. welcome marty, to just say a few words. [ applause ] >> i want to thank you all for
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coming. this event means a great deal to karen and me and our family. i also want to thank our gold-plated panel. and bonny and mark, and the seldom scene hand of jim for putting this together. a couple of months ago i was at the lunch counter of clyde's at friendship heights, and i was paying the check, and a woman came over to me and said, aren't you marty tolchen? and i said, guilty as charged. and i asked, do i know you? and she said, well, i've been in your home twice, and i was a student of sue's, and sue, as bonnie mentioned, would have all of her students over at least
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once during a semester for a potluck dinner, and then a class. and she continued. and she said, sue tolchen changed my life. so i said, how? she said, well, until i took her courses, i had absolutely no interest in public service. but she made it seem so vital, so challenging, so fulfilling, that i have just retired after a career at the fbic. and i want to say that as sue enhanced the lives of her students, her students and faculty and administrators here at george mason enhanced her life. she loved her colleagues. she loved the students with a passion. she was a great advocate for them. she would tell them to regard
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the doctoral program as an obstacle course, and not to try to be creative. she said creative will come later. now just do what the professors want you to do and you'll be fine. and then when they got their ph.d.s, she helped them public their dissertations, she helped them get jobs, and she had a great network out there that she worked with, really, to help her students. so i just want to thank all of you, and all of her colleagues and her students for everything that they meant to sue, and for making her life as wonderful as it was. thank you. [ applause ] >> so now it's my honor to introduce our keynote speaker
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for today. she comes to us from -- she's the victor thomas professor of government at har vrd university. she, too, is a prolific author. i won't list all her many publications and awards. but a highlight of what she's done in her long and prestigious career. she's a director of the college strategy network. she's author of the tea party and remaking of republican conservativism. so relevant to today. she served as the dean of harvard's graduate school of arts and sciences, and she's been elected to membership in all three major u.s. interdisciplinary honor societies. american academy of arts and sciences, philosophical so si ti and academy of sciences. her work covers bost comparative and american politics. her work on social policy has been very impactful in the
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course of the last half of the century. so it's my great honor to welcome her here as our keynote speaker here today. [ applause ] >> well, thank you very much for that great introduction. and let me say that, it's very moving to hear the recollections of susan tolchen. it made me realize that i wish i'd had a chance to sit down with her in the last year to talk about her understandings of what's going on in american politics now, and her concerns about this election, which i share perhaps because both of us have studied grass roots popular anger empirically.
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i know that when donald trump first announced his candidacy, there was a virtual unanimity of academic and media pundits who said this is going nowhere. and i immediately went into a state of anxiety from which i'm hoping to emerge in three weeks, because i think like what has been reported about susan, i understood that this might be very well going quite a long ways. and with untold consequences. i'll also say i have a great appreciation for the work she's done on gender, and the kos moss club reminds me that many years ago when i was working on revolutions, i was invited to participate in a cia sponsored panel. and somebody called at the last minute to say i would need to go in the side door if i chose to participate. i didn't have any problem talking to the cia, but i did have a problem going in the side door. so it didn't work out. all right.
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today i'm going to talk about this remarkable election. and i think it resonates with the theme of voter anger that i look forward to hearing our distinguished panel reflect on, which i'm sure will go way beyond anything i have to say here. i don't need to remind everybody in the room here what the high stakes in the election as a whole are. i'll skip over all the things that i share with general audiences about all the offices that are at stake. i mean, this would be a high stakes election if intense populous movements and anger were not front and center. but the last thing on my list here, that this is an election that has turned out to be about u.s. national identity. and the ways in which generational and racial and ethnic shifts are playing out. and in this last month, front
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and center, women's changing role in our society, and the, i think raw anger that that has evoked among many people. who are looking at the changes that have unfolded over my lifetime, over the last 40 years or so. so i'm going to talk about the following puzzles about this election. the rise of donald trump. i'm not going to talk at all about whether he's going to win or anything like that. that's not the point. the point is, how did he manage to win the republican presidential nomination. the nomination of one of two major parties, which even compared to the rise of ethnic nationalism in other western countries, it has captured third or fourth parties, or not one of two major parties. this is a genuine puzzle. why was that challenge in the republican party at least
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temporarily and perhaps for quite some time more potent than the sanders challenge, another form of populous challenge in the democratic party. and then briefly, i'll conclude with some remarks about trumpism and brexit. now, just for the sake of definition, i'm going to define trumpism as strong -- a strong man ethnic nationalist appeal. i may have hess tad to do this before the republican convention. but with that back drop, and with the message that was delivered at the convention, i mean, i see no reason to hesitate any longer in characterizing trumpism in that way. now, it's also a political coalition that's made all kinds of gestures, at least, however reliable or unreliable they may be in the direction of republican policy stands and constituencies. certainly gestures toward the national rifle association, the christian right, and from time
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to time, commitments to reduce taxes and eliminate obama policies. now, what opens the door to this sa long-term trend toward extreme partisan and ideological polarization. and that trend is increasingly in recent decades asymmetric. that is tilted towards the right. between the late '60s and the 1980s, the two parties sorted themselves out in the wake of the civil rights revolution that finally extended voting rights to african-americans in the south. so you could say, and i think tom mann has written about this, the political science profession was slow to notice the narratives of the two parties sorting themselves out, and the regional alliances changing,
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that that shifted after the 1980s. and particularly after the 1990s with the newt gingrich manifestation in the republican party. and since then, really, this is a major that political scientists use to pinpoint the ideological positioning, particularly on economic and political issues of house republicans, but this is also true of what's been going on in the electorate with a lag that follows what happens with the elites first. and with advocacy groups and social movements surrounding the two parties. you can see the house republicans have been leading the way in many ways, and they just keep moving further and further to the right. this, by the way, shatters the theological faith of the political science profession in the median voter. and the belief that some still don't want to give up. that parties will moderate and
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move to the center. when faced with extremes. ha! [ laughter ] just to bring some policy content into all of this, here's what a republican looked like in the 1950s. i'm an antiquer. i collected this postcard in maine. and it gives the ten reasons to reelect dwight eisenhower. look at ropeasons eight, nine a ten, promoting americans without centralization. he has been liberal in dealing with people. of course, conservative in dealing with their money. number ten, this would get him written out of the republican party as a communist. he has been a president for americans regardless of political affiliation, race, creed, color or economic background. so that's what it used to be. and we've come light years from that. now, how did this happen?
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the approximate narrative we all know. this was certainly not the candidate that republicans hoped to put forward. what they thought would be a winnable presidential election in 2016. so there were at least a dozen highly credible business or ideological conservative candidates with governing experience in the senate. former governors, sitting governors. but from the very first moment in the summer of 2015, that he declared, trump emerged with close to a plurality, or plurality in most polls and he never gave that up during the entire ups and downs of the pre-primary and the primary process. and the last-ditch efforts mounted by people like mitt romney to try to stop the trump
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train after he emerged dominant in the primaries really went nowhere. in fact, i think it's an interesting thing that we might want to ponder, that it's mainly mormon politicians who have signed off. i think because they have a sense of public responsibility in the public sector. it's a conservativism that's quite different from the free market and even evangelical conservativism that are the other major strands. but, now, i think if we're going to look at approximate facilitating factor, the u.s. media, which i would characterize as fragmented and economically stressed, but also with a major sector that has been developed over the last decade and a half that can drive right-wing messages through fox news and through even more through a network of right-wing talk radio. it's not so much that that
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complex wanted donald trump. i think they were surprised along with everybody else. but they had help to make him a media star. and he was very uncannily skillful in pressing all the buttons and using the techniques to get media attention throughout the republican primary. there have been some empirical studies of this, including harvard, showing that he got an amazing percentage of the coverage. and those who looked into the content found it was either positive or horse race coverage for donald trump. the second most covered person was clinton. but clinton got mainly negative coverage in 2015 and 2016. and sanders got mainly positive coverage. he got a lot, too. so really, the two challengers to hillary clinton got the positive coverage. and look at the rest of them. the republican also lands -- they had trouble getting anybody to pay attention to them.
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the final estimate is about $2 billion of free media coverage in the republican primaries. of course, that was also a great advantage that trump was competing against so many others. and the field didn't narrow. now, we all know these things. so let me move to the deeper trends, in that larger contest of asymmetric polarization that i think fueled popular support for trump. now, i want to be clear. i actually don't think american politics overall is driven by what voters want and feel primarily. and there's a lot of research and political science in the last decade that suggests that elected office holders and politicians don't actually do what most voters want. but it's still very important, particularly in presidential contests, particularly in
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primary contests, to have an aroused and determined block of voters. so i want to talk about that popular support for trump, where it came from, and i have to say that it reminds me a lot of what vanessa williamson and i heard from grass roots tea party activists when we interviewed them in arizona, virginia, and new england in 2011. many of them are the same people who are now supporting donald trump, even though they might not use the label tea party. which is not used as much. so a number of factors, i think, have fed into popular support for trump. changing religious landscape. we need to remember that although white evangelical protestants are a declining proportion of the population, and seculars are an increasing, the white evangelicals are feeling on the defensive, and
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they always vote. they're very, very good citizens. they vote not just in presidential contests, but in midterms. i think sharply rising economic inequalities are part of the story here, but i'm not going to be one to suggest -- and maybe tom will disagree in the panel, i hope so -- i don't think economic suffering is what lies behind the trump phenomenon. and i'll say more about that in a bit. the fact that we're in an era of rapid immigration, even though it's slightly slowed down, but since 1965, immigrants have been coming in in large numbers, and they are people of color. often from central america and mexico. and then finally i'm going to say a little bit about how the implosion of the republican party, splits between the elites and non-elites opened the door, created a vacuum into which an impresario could charge.
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so let me just offer a little bit of data on this. this is just in recent times. the fast change in religious landscapes, evangelical protestants, now about a quarter of the population. but look at where they are concentrated. they are spread out around the country. and as i said, these are christian right adherents. and they are people who vote. so they represent -- the fact that they're feeling on the losing side of the cultural transformation that susan talked about in the 1960s, makes them available for an anti-establishment, particularly an anti-democratic party candidate. we all know that we're in an era of sharply rising economic inequality where the gains have gone to the top. that certainly creates a situation in which people across the political spectrum are
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resentful of the facts that incomes have declined in the middle, and all the gains are going to the top. that opens the door for certain messages, even if it doesn't drive the circumstances of particular voters who take particular stands. the economic characteristics of the trump supporters, by the way, suggests it's more complex than just saying they're suffering in this economic era. we know that non-college educated white men are disproportionately supportive of trump. but those who support him over other gop nominees are not disproportionately affected by a foreign trade or immigration. so it's not a simple relationship. nate silver did a look at the median incomes, the national median income is $56,000, the trump voters thaf $72,000.
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higher than those, for those sanders and clinton voters. by the way, sanders voters are younger. they were actually headed for higher median incomes than clinton's voters. she is the inequality candidate actually in this contest. and all of them are lower than kasich and rubio voters. think construction contractors. or lower level white collar, blue collar people. i go to breakfast at a working class diner in cambridge every week day. and the waitress tells me all of the blue collar guys and firemen and policemen she knows are trump people. and this is massachusetts. the girls, she said, are not. [ laughter ] and she calls them girls. i'm not being insulting here. and then most interesting finding recently reported in the
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atlantic, that the trump supporters are less likely to have moved from their home communities. and of course, you only need to drive around the united states to realize that once you get beyond the metro areas and into the far suburbs and into the smaller cities, and into the rural areas, you see the trump-pence signs. i think in many ways, this is people living in communities that have not yet experienced some of the changes that they're very afraid of. and in many ways, they're seeing the changes displayed in lurid ways on the television networks that they watch, and the radio that they listen to. now, the other thing i want to point to is that by the time the trump candidacy emerges, the republican party in many ways has been hollowed out. we're reading in the newspaper all the time about the republican establishment. there are probably members of the republican party establishment here, so i don't want to be insulting, but the research that my colleagues and i have done suggests that, for
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example, we looked at what was happening to the budgets of the republican party committees between 2002 and 2014. compared to the budgets, the resources controlled by ultra-free market think tanks, the network of organizations tied with the koch brothers, even long-standing extra party groups like the nra and christian right organizations. and frankly, there was a huge drop in resources controlled by the party itself moving out to these far right flankers. and we know that in economic policies during the obama years, elected office holders in the republican party and candidates almost to a man and woman adhered to ultra-free market principles, calling for free trade, reductions in social spending of all kinds. and these are actually not positions that are popular, either with most americans or with most republican based voters.
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so the point that i want to make here is that by the time the trump challenge emerged to elected republicans and party leaders, they had in many ways already been outflanked and pushed in directions that were quite at variance with their base. but above all, they're at variance with their base on immigration. and how to respond to immigration. i think immigration is the key issue here. both the fact that it has increased, and that it has shifted from being from europe, from being latin america, and more recently asia. and this is what it looks like as a percent of the u.s. population over the last century. and you can see that we're not yet in a period, it's that 12.9% for 2010, about where we are now, we're not yet in a period where immigrants as a proportion of the total u.s. population are what they were a century ago.
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but it looks like it's headed to more and more people. and that's what those who are fearful about the changing society, and a changing culture see when they look at immigration. just to help you understand. in 2010, the largest single immigrant group was from mexico. all over the country. there's some very good research that tells us why that's true. it turns out that we've been building walls for quite a while. it's not a new idea. and social scientists have found that the major effect of the walls was to raise the cost of a rival, not to prevent the mainly young men immigrants from coming to the united states, but to make it hard for them to go home for easter or christmas, or for grandma's funeral. and so they responded in recent decades by bringing their families to the united states,
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and by spreading out all over the country. so if you visit the heartland states, in the middle of the country, you're going to find large immigrant populations from central america and mexico, often holding the most difficult and low paid and least supported jobs, with large numbers of children. and that changes the cultural fabric in ways that are easy for politicians to exploit the anger about, if they choose to do so. this is what the largest immigrant groups looked like 100 years ago. mexico was there, but it was mainly scandinavia germany, french canadians up there in maine. so we have some pretty good research that shows that trump supporters, compared to other republican identified voters and
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compared to other conservative identified voters, forget about the democrats here, just forget about them, are much more concerned about the growing number of newcomers from other countries as a threat to u.s. values, much more likely to see islam more than other religions as something that encourages violence, and believes that it's bad for the country for blacks, latinos and asians to perhaps become the majority of the population. so there are some differences that set the trump voters apart on demography, males, older males, no college degrees. but the really pronounced ones are the things they're concerned about. that have to do with the impact of immigration. its reverberation with international terrorist incidents, and worries about the changing composition of american society. some of them come right out and
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say it. this isn't typical. but this is sort of an independent guy running for congress who temporarily put this sign up, that spelled it out. the other part of this, of course, is that republican based voters, and certainly the trump voters, and the tea partiers before them, but probably more than just those blocks of voters, have been very angry at their party leaders, at their elected representatives in congress. throughout barack obama's presidency, we know that congressional leadership of the republican party and leading republican politicians have promised things about stopping obama, rolling back his chief initiatives, preventing him from being reelected, all of which they have been unable to deliver upon. and so in this poll that was taken in may of 2015, you can
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see that democratic voters and republican voters alike have a lot of am by lances about the leaders of their parties. but look how pronounced it is among the republican identified voters. 60%, close to 60% say that their leaders are not -- mitch mcconnell and paul ryan, we're looking at you -- are not doing a good job, particularly on government spending, i.e., getting rid of obamacare, illegal immigration, and same-sex marriage. so that opens the door for a candidate who, from the start, signaled that he was angry about mexican immigration in particular. didn't make any bones about it. challenged political correctness, which i think if you listen to working class people talking, that's one of the things they like best about trump.
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that he says what everybody's thinking. and he doesn't worry about it. and the fact that he's challenging republican elites, along with media elites in the democratic party, is a big plus in their eyes. now, let me quickly say something about the two anti-party insurgencies that we saw in this election. you know, bernie sanders, when he first emerged, got just as much derision of the pundit class as donald trump. but he hung around, didn't he. he was there for several months. and in the end, in the final weeks and months of his campaign, was deliberately targeting the democratic party as a rigged establishment, as we all recall. so there are some similarities and differences that i think we need to be clear about. these are fueled by male anger.
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something that susan talked about in 1996. i think we can say we're in an era where white males are angry. and about a lot of different things. but these two candidates in some ways tapped into that male anger. and as somebody who, it won't surprise you that i'm an older female democrat. i'm a clinton person. i've been a clinton person all along. and every time i would talk to women in my age group during the primaries, they would all describe the terrible attack e-mails they got from sanders supporters who were young men using sexual epithets to describe their support for hillary clinton. where did that anger come from? i don't know. but it was there. of course, the difference is that sanders supporters were disproportionately college educated, or in college, and
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younger voters, whereas the tilted male group for trump is older and tends to be without college degrees. they both had populous appeals. the economic populism, the core of the trump challenge despite gestures on the trade questions, i would argue, has been an appeal to ethno ideaism. bernie sanders always said he was disadvantaged, but as a matter of fact he got a lot of coverage. he was never subject to attack ads, either from the clinton campaign that didn't want to waste the funds. the sanders challenge presented itself as a revolution. but, you know, i studied revolutions. i know revolutions. this was not a revolution. this was the kind of challenge
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from the left of the democratic party that we see regularly in, you know, bill bradley, howard dean, barack obama, and only one of them has ever succeeded because it put together white liberals with african-americans. and that's barack obama. so this is a routine kind of event in presidential contests in the democratic party. it was certainly also a campaign that perfected the dean-obama model of the repeated salary donor contributions. these are not small donors. these are people with middle class incomes who give repeatedly. but it is a way of raising resources that can generate huge resources in a different way than going to cocktail parties with very rich people. on the other hand, the sanders campaign, like the trump campaign, channeled most of its resources into rallies, and into media. in the trump case, mostly free
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media, but in the sanders case, they spent a huge amount of the money they raised on ads. it failed in the end, the sanders challenge, with very little appeal to blacks and latinos. and it has had an impact on the party agenda, but democratic party institutions were able to handle this challenge. and i don't really care what was in the wikileaks leaks. that was small potatoes. they showed that a bunch of staffers at the democratic national committee were irritated at bernie in april. i can tell you every democratic party person in the whole country was irritated at bernie in april. so it would have been surprising if there haven't been some kvetching in those internal e-mails. in its public stance, the dnc maintained their composure, made some concessions all the way through to the convention, and
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managed to incorporate sanders, and i would say most of his voters into the coalition. and we'll give them a voice after the election if democrats control congress as well as the presidency. let me close my remarks by just asking the question that i think has been on everybody's mind, including donald trump who has brought neofarage over from britain to campaign for him. i was in britain just before the brexit vote and i know that everybody in the establishment there said, oh, this isn't going to pass. i think there are some similarities and differences. white identity politics at the core. immigrants of a major part of the population targeted in the campaign. in britain, they were not just muslims, but poles and italians. but immigration in britain was really not tailing off.
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it has leveled off into the united states. and more to the point, an appeal -- a candidacy that appeals to nativism, and tries to reprise the 1968 law and order campaign, just faces a very different situation in the united states than in britain. in britain, minorities are just not a major part of the electorate. but look at the difference between 1968 and 2016 in the united states. the gray there are whites without college degrees. they were 80% of the eligible electorate in richard nixon's time. now they're, you know, less than half of the eligible electorate. whites with college degrees, who have trended very heavily against trump throughout this entire campaign, and are more so now, are now about more than a
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third of whites. and we have large blocks of asian-americans, hispanic-americans and african-americans eligible to vote. now, i did put in parentheses there the turnout rates for these various groups in 2012. that's why the end of this election is so bitter. in many ways, it's a turnout battle in which the trump forces, to the degree they have a rational strategy, are trying to up the turnout of non-college whites, particularly males, and the democrats are trying to reassemble and deepen the coalition that reelected barack obama in 2012. and there's a little bit of a struggle there, because hispanic americans, only about half of them voted in 2012, of those eligible asian-americans only about half. a lot of those who are eligible to vote are young.
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and have been, shall we say, slow and reluctant to come to support hillary clinton. the big divide in this election is among whites, between the college educated and the non-college educated as well as between racial groups. and we've seen in this last phase, that what may be the death now for donald trump is the divide between men and women. the gender gap that's emerging is the highest gender gap we have seen. we'll see if that turns out to be true at the polls. my friend, allen fitzpatrick, has written about women's quest for the presidency for over a century and points out hillary clinton now has what all of her predecessors through margaret chase smith and shirley chisholm lacked is party support, money, and foreign policy credibility, all of which has been held against her, of course.
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but she has it. and chances are, despite the demonization that has occurred in this campaign, and most recently commenting on her looks, which don't measure up, i think she's probably going to assemble the final piece of the puzzle, which is the high turnout among women, including women like my waitress, who is a non-college educated woman, whose girlfriends are all for hillary. okay. i stop. [ applause ]
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>> do these things work? >> you have to turn them on. >> i'm not used to these things. hello, hello? there? okay. good. hi. wow, what a speech. thank you so very much, thea, that was just wonderful. thank you. [ applause ] and so who am i? i'm marvin kalb. i've been asked to be the moderator of this panel.
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i'm honored to do so. why me? because i was a good friend of sue's. i've been a reporter for a long time with cbs and nbc and for the last 30 years have been associated with the kennedy school, and i'm now a senior adviser, i think that's what they call me, pe puat the pulit center in dc. i want to start this discussion by going back to something the dean said at the very beginning when he cited what sue everett wrote about in her book, the speeder finch line, "i'm mad as hell and i'm not going to take it anymore." the wonderful thing about sue's use of that is that as a scholar, she was capable of the most serious scholarship and all of the data that scholars go by. but she linked it to something that people can understand who are not scholars.
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that was a great gift that she had, and i wish that more scholars had that, and thea does, so thank you all very much. the idea of the question is still very much with us. we're still not quite sure what happens now that this window has been opened. remember, she raised this question 20 years ago. and we're thinking about it now again. and it's incumbent on us perhaps finally to come up with an answer. we're now running to the end of an unprecedented presidential campaign in which the republican candidate, donald trump, who by the way, takes pride in pronouncing that he doesn't read books, and reaching into this voter anger concept once again. so sue was writing about it 20 years ago, and it's here once again. so it hasn't gone away.
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have the ingredients of the voter anger changed? and if that's it case, in what way? i don't quite understand to this day how donald trump got to where he has got. and is voter anger the reason? i doubt it. i doubt it. was it the reason that bill clinton won, was reelected in 1996? it was a major issue then. it is a major reason now. and i think that the panelists are -- i don't want to say uniquely, because here around washington, we have lots of panelists, from morning 'til night. but they're awfully well-equipped to put all of this issue of voter anger into a proper political context. and i hope when they do it, they will as well incorporate perhaps some of the ideas that thea
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presented in her keynote address. so down at my far right, catherine kramer, director of the center for public service, a professor of political science at the university of wisconsin. she's the author of "the politics of resentment: rural consciousness in wisconsin and the rise of scott walker." next to her, pat choate, co-founder of the congressional economic leadership institute. and we'll all remember that he was the running mate in 1996 for the independent candidacy of ross perot. next to him, right smack in the middle, is tom edsel, the "new york times" columnist, also a professor at the columbia graduate school of journalism. to my immediate right, tom mann, the w. arrivel harriman scholar at the institute of governmental
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studies at uc berkeley. i would like to start and ask catherine to talk to us, as i will all the panelists, for three or four minutes of opening comments dealing with that central issue of voter rage/anger. please. >> thank you so much. it's a real honor to be here. thank you again for having me. i will say two things just to start off. one is that the anger among women has certainly caught my attention in the past two weeks. and i think it's very interesting that we are here to honor professor tolchen, who was both an expert on women in politics and voter anger, and how interesting that those things are coming together, and as thea sort of alluded to, the withdrawal of college-educated white women from the republican party in the past month or so or since at least early august is quite remarkable.
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carrie purcell at politico has pointed this out as well. that's one thing i'll raise. the other is that i'm here to represent the midwest, i think, and i can report back to you on what marv kindly said was the title of my book on resentment. since 2007 i've been spending time primarily in rural wisconsin, listening to people, inviting myself into conversations in gas stations, for the most part, and hearing what i've called resentment because i see it as this slow burning sentiment that in many cases has erupted into anger in this election. those of us in a small community don't get our fair share. part of it is about economics. but it's about many things. feeling we're not getting our fair share of taxpayer dollars, that our taxpayer dollars are being sucked into the cities. it's also about not getting our
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fair share of power or decisionmaking. people in many rural communities i talk to say all the decisions are made elsewhere based on kind of urban values and ideas, and those folks don't understand what life is like in small town wisconsin, small town usa. another thing i've heard them saying is, you know, people in the cities don't actually respect us, right, they call us red neck racists, they don't understand our way of life and our values. and that resentment i have definitely seen turn into support for donald trump. so i'll leave that for now. >> thank you very much. pat? >> thank you very much. >> you want to hold that microphone? >> great being with you, great being with the panel and with you today. as a background for my comments, let me note that i have -- it's
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on. okay, good. during my half century career, i've had appointed policy positions with three gotta find norse, four presidents, and been involved in six presidential campaigns, three republican, two democrat, and one independent. sue's book i think touches essentially on a trajectory of change that has occurred during that past half century. she opens this book, which is really a very good book, i reread it coming out here, it's a wonderful typology, and i would recommend it to everyone. but she begins the book with a quote from john adams. basically she says, "politics as a practice has always been the
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systematic organization of hatreds." the genius of the american system, created in large part by john adams, is to take and control and channel that i had a rhett into a democratic process where there can be anger, where it is not revolutionary in nature. what has happened, and a source of changing anger as described by sue and others, into visceral hatred, which we're now seeing in this campaign, has been a series of disastrous policies over the past 30 or 40 years. and i listed some. vietnam. we relied into vietnam. the iraq war. the afghanistan war. the 8 million foreclosures of houses by the elimination of the
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glass-steagall act. the allowance of hedge funds to go from $20 trillion of debt to over $240 trillion of debt. literally we have hedge funds that have gambled our economy 12 times our gross domestic product. it took us -- we had 8 million homes foreclosed, taken away brutally by people. we had $16 trillion of bailouts with the federal reserve, thank goodness to bloomberg for their foia request. we spent $748 billion on t.a.r.p. we had 50,000 plant factory closings since the geyear 2000. we've lost 5 million jobs. these job losses are following on people who do not have college educations. it is the source of the inequality that we're speaking
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about. and we have had our banks fined 248 -- our top ten banks fined $248 billion and no one has been held accountable for this. we can talk about how this happens and what we should do about it in our discussion. my point is, there is very good reason for people in this country to be angry. >> thank you, pat, very much. tom? >> it's an honor to be here. and an honor to speak at a forum dedicated to susan polchen. the book she and her husband wrote about patronage is still important to me as a reporter. i was very surprised to hear marty's description where he said he was paying the check for marty that seemed to be a very
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unusual thing. [ laughter ] no, that's not fair. he's a very generous person. but i just wanted to give him one wisecrack. my contribution to this is that i think that what has happened is that among white voters, the two parties have flipped on their heads. and under trump, the republican party has become the party of the underdog, and the democratic party has become the party of the overdog. this is really among white voters. this is a huge shift from the democratic party that i grew up with, which was supposed to be the party of the working man, woman, joe six-pack, the blue collar guy riding the subway in the morning at 6:00 a.m. now -- and i mean that not just
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economically, and i think economics does play more of a factor than people would suggest, this is also true of the culture in general. the evangelical conservative christian sees the united states has tilted against them. they see themselves on the losing end of the cultural war, that the moral majority no longer exists as a majority. i think they are actually dead right. if you look at television, the changing attitude towards gay marriage, they've lost that war. and they feel it. and they are angry. and you have combined that with their joining to the republican party and discovering in 2008 that this party could not save them from the devastation of the
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2008-2009 collapse. that basically created a revolt that did not find expression until 2015 with donald trump. and that process is now ongoing. how that's going to affect politics after 2016 is the real question. what's going to happen with this bloc of votes that's roughly 40 to 50% of the republican party, where will they go, what will the republican party do, how can the two-party system adjust to this really internal upheaval within one party? those are going to be the major questions that we face going forward. with that, let me pass it on to the genius of politics, tom mann. >> to the other tom. >> you mistake me, that was thomas mann. marty and karen, thanks for including me, i really appreciate being here.
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and thea, you nailed it. i just think you got it right. the whole story right, in all of its rich dimensions. i'm convinced sue would have been very pleased to listen to that argument. an important part of it is the fact that some people say, well, it's all economics. john judas, by the way, continues to believe it's a story of entirely economic nationalism. but the competing claim is, wait a minute, this goes back a long time, and it has cultural roots. and the identity politics has changed its meaning. moving from the identities of
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newly emerging minorities to the concerns and fears of a threatened, declining white majority, which is working its way toward being a minority. dylan matthews at vox has summarized some of the research that thea referred to, and i think it's important to keep in mind, of course economics is important. the broad context is economic. but there are a lot of people who came through this okay, who are champions of donald trump. so it sells us there's a tribalism at work here that transcends personal economic
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well-being. reinhold neibur, the favorite philosopher of e.j. dionne and barack obama among others, wrote a piece for "the american scholar," believe it or not, in 1937, called "pawns for fascism: our lower middle class." now, that's not something you might expect from neibur. but in fact he laid this out very clearly. a shrewd democrat may catalyze a mass movement by preying on their social anxiety, partly based on racial resentments, but also national prejudice, is is equally strong force. i think the coming together of
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the changing composition of our society has made a tremendous difference. second point, i've written about and said enough about, and thea gave me credit, but the story is explained by -- in part by what was happening in the republican party. for three decades, they didn't mean to get trump, but in effect they made it possible. we've faced populist demagogues throughout our history. they tend to be marginalized, effectively. trump was the first to come forward and garner the nomination of a major party and scare the wits out of a whole lot of people in this country and around the world. with parties being so strong, that lent him a base that made it possible for him to be
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elected. it wasn't ever likely, but it was always possible. we're coming through this, but it's scary. and it reminds us that our democracy is vulnerable, just like northern european social democracies are vulnerable, with a very generous social safety n net, to forces of tribalism built around race and nationalism that can be quite potent. even in a country that is a nation of immigrants, is facing this head on. >> thanks, tom, very much. in listening to the for you of you, and thea as well, thea mentioned this, but i didn't get it from any of the four of you, and that was the role of the media. and i mentioned that
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particularly because from the time sue wrote her book in 1996 until today, we have the birth of msnbc, we have the birth of fox, we have really the flowering of a radio right wing culture. and i'm going to you, catherine, to ask, when you go to the gasoline stations and talk to your people, if there were no television 20, 30, 40 years ago, and if they lived in their own world, and were not instantly connected to every argument taking place everywhere in the united states, especially the arguments up on the hill, where you could listen to them for a while and have the feeling that nothing is happening here, it's just words, argue that people would not have the feelings they're having today. i'm wondering for all of you, but starting with you, catherine, take the media,
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inject it into your analysis, and try to seek some way of understanding the broader context of where they are. >> what i have to say may not sit very well with many people on the panel, but what i learned led me to believe that we overstate the role of the media, and that most of what people, the way they were understanding the roted back from something they heard on fox news, for example, at times, but much of it was their own reflections that they had created together when visiting one another. oftentimes there would be one person in a coffee klatch of regulars who paid attention to the news, and he or she would communicate to everyone else. instead, the think they were most often talking about was their own personal experience
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and their own economic struggles and their own anxieties about the coming cultural changes, that's my term, not theirs, that yes, they had heard glimmers of through the news media, but it's not as if their interpretation of public issues was something that they had gained in isolation from news media. does that make sense? there's much more interpretation in their own specific location going on than i think we acknowledge. >> thank you. thank you. thank you very much. pat, would you have a comment? >> i think people attempt to take their situation and put it into a context. and in doing that contextual construction, i think they're very influenced by the media. i think what has happened in our society and why we're seeing the politics that we're now seeing, is we've lost the vetting functions. at one point, the political
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parties would have vetted donald trump out. he would have been gone. but that has gone, that vetting function has gone. when the print media was much stronger than what it was, the print media and the three major networks and pbs, vetted out what was a legitimate discussion. we've had the rise of talk radio and now cable television that is driven by rage and cash. donald trump got that much exposure on the networks for a simple reason that the cable networks were able to charge $5,000, just regular cable. when trump was on they were able to raise that to 200. >> made an enormous amount of money. >> enormous amount of money on that. that's why i'm totally convinced
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that trump and ailes will form a network -- i think he's going to lose the election, i hope he loses the election, but i think they're going to form a media network to try to cut into that billion dollars a year that fox news is making. they're going to get to the right of fox. they're going to -- trump is now building his audience for his tv network, his media network. but again, rage is profitable. and that's what he's capturing. >> the idea of setting up a network is not an easy thing to do. i mean, the first thing you've got to have is hundreds of millions of dollars. he's got to get that from banks. and banks these days are not in bed with trump. they're quite reluctant to deal with him, as a matter of fact. the second thing is carriers. if you're going to have a successful network, you have to have stations all over the country carrying you. and there is -- there have been
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so many efforts to set these things up. so he may try. but he may be spending a lot of money and wasting it. tom? >> i'll simply say, he's going to enter the market with 25 to 30 million viewers who will be solid viewers. he can get that money, marv. >> he can get the money from russia. [ laughter ] >> we've already got the call letters, w.p.n., white people's network. i think, one, that the media has lost its credibility because of polarization, and the media, or the vetting media, now are all seen as left wing media. there's been a shift in the way "the new york times," "washington post," the networks, all of them are seen. and they're now easily dismissed as, that's just those lefties mouthing off. secondly, the financial problems
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facing all the media have created this situation where trump could run roughshod, because he produced viewers, just like he produced hits on the web. when i would write a column about trump, it would get three times the hits that a column on inequality would get, ten times the hits. there's money in trump, for the media. it's a tough situation. and the market is now defining the media, where is it used to be the media had so much money, it could define itself. that's no longer the case. >> tom, go ahead. >> listening to tom, one demural from hilary. she didn't quite see that left wing bias of the traditional media. if anything, they were very late to coming to the guts of this
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campaign and the stakes of this campaign, and only in the last weeks have you seen the kind of reporting on trump that might have been done last year. and the kinds of things that they covered on clinton were -- i mean, unusual. but that isn't what i want to say. i think reality tv is -- has been more important to trump than the media, news media. it was his basis of visibility and popularity and attention that allowed him to short-circuit all of the other processes. and i think that's really importa important. and was masterful in playing the media during the primary process. he knew how to do it.
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but what i come to believe is that in this world of asymmetrical political polarization, the media, the traditional media hasn't done a thing to help the public understand what's going on and why we had gridlock. and it's not just the washington establishment. their search for equivalence has in effect neutered their important role in our politics. and therefore they weren't present in a serious way until very late in the campaign to help us cope with the most serious threat to our democracy since the civil war. >> we could have a wonderful discussion about the role of the media in the coverage of trump and the entire campaign. but i don't really want us to go there. what i would like to do is go back to sue's book. and all of us who have taken a
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look at that book appreciate what it is sue was dealing with at that time. she was writing and researching in the early part of the 1990s. and the book comes out in '96. 20 years have passed. where she here to do an update on that book, what are the issues that have emerged in the last 20 years that she would now spend a couple of extra chapters writing about or rewriting what it is that she had done earlier? catherine? >> i'll pick a general one that i found very striking when i reread the book. and this was her pointing out that at the time she was writing the book, americans had it better than at any time in history. and i thought, in the 20 years since then, that's not really the case anymore, in many of the ways that thea pointed out. and one thing i did was to look up this question that gallup has
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asked for many, many years, at least since 1994 and probably going back earlier than i was able to find. and it's just about general satisfaction in life. and it goes like this. in general are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the united states at this time? and not long after her book came out, gallup's estimate of this put -- in 1999, it was at nearly a 20-year high. at this point in time, in 1999, 71% of the american public said they were satisfied. now it's reversed. so that 72% say they're dissatisfied, and 27% say they're satisfied. and i would imagine she would, you know, make something of that. she pointed something out that we needed to pay attention to. and i think this election is a great reminder, that if left unaddressed, it comes to a crisis or near crisis moment.
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>> two things i think she would focus on. one is the '96 communications act that in effect allowed the agglomeration of the media. prior to that any individual owner could only own a set number of tv stations, a set number of radio stations. now it is possible to homogenize that and own 1500, 2,000 stations, and be able to deliver a rush limbaugh or an alex jones and their message to the whole of the country. that's new and different, i think she would focus on that. i think the second thing she would probably focus on, because it's significant, has been citizens united, and the whole question of money. p perot ran the '96 campaign on
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$135 million. you can't do that in pennsylvania today. and we wind up with a situation today where a massive amount of that money is dark money. we do not know where it comes from. we do not know the agendas of the people behind it. those two things, the media agglomeration, and this massive flow of money, i understand the 6 or $8 billion in this campaign, i think those would be the two things. >> excellent. thank you very much. tom edsel. >> on the second point, i disagree. trump ran a campaign that was actually low budget, relatively speaking. he's gotten a huge amount of free media, like $2 billion, as i think thea shows. but he has raised and spent much less than hillary, and especially in a primary. beyond that, even his advertising in every given
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state. i think this election, if anything, shows that citizens united has not had the overwhelming consequence that we thought it would have. i think the other things that sue would note would be, one, in 1999, at the high point of when everyone thought everything was hunky dorie, that was the high point in the economy. the '90s were golden years in this country, and they were golden years for everybody across the board. low income, high income, middle income. everybody rose, all boats rose. since then, we've had a very slow growth period. we've had rising inequality with very little growth at the middle and down below, if not no growth. that's a big difference. if you're going to get pessimistic, there are real grounds to be pessimistic for the majority of the electorate. there are a lot of other points, but i'll leave it there. >> i think sue had the categories all there.
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it's the context of each has changed. the economy, she had seen the stagnation of wages, but that then continued, and we saw increasing economic inequality. and then we had the worst global financial crisis and recession since the great depression. so this unleashed, you know, a lot of the other forces and factors that she herself addressed. and i think she would have, after viewing this, sort of looked at the two parties, not together but separately, and try to see what's happening, with all the racial minorities clustering in one party and the other party being predominantly the right party, that's the
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kinds of thing that has a way of really exacerbating divisions that we managed to dampen at times in our history. >> and the issue that comes right out of that is, of course, the presidency of barack obama. so i would like to raise this question. if we are discussing the heart and soul of voter anger, to what extent, i don't want to sort of prejudice my question, to what extent do you believe that the presence of the first black president in the white house in the last eight years has led to the depth of anger? or is that irrelevant to the depth of anger? >> it's totally relevant. and i was going to raise my hand and ask if i could add in a second thing that i think is so important to the context in the past 20 years. and it is the presidency of barack obama. and also our heightened attention to racism in this country.
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i think the events of the pass few years have been -- i mean, i believe it's largely because of cellphones, and that white america has seen in an inescapable fashion the kind of violence that's going on in our country. i think all of us are trying to make sense of the many bewildering things going on in this world. and i think when people are given a story and targets of blame, it rallies emotion, including anger, in a very kind of effective way. and i think the manner in which anxiety about the changing cultural composition of our country has been rallied or targeted toward barack obama, is a very big part of the story. he has become a target for a lot of the angst and emotion about the fact that we are no longer a white country. >> anyone want to pick that up? pat? >> i think that what we have
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seen is a code word for racism in the attacks on barack obama. and the whole question about birtherism. i find it astounding that something like 60% of republican voters believe that this president was not born in the united states, which means they believe he has not a legitimate office holder to the position. at the same time, i think what we're also seeing here is misogyny on a massive scale in the reactions to hillary clinton. and again, it is deep seated misogyny. this is deep seated racism. and we're in the process of moving our way across that. i would like to say to tom, on the question of citizens united, it is true, i agree with him on trump, he has been able to do earned media magnificently well. but the influence of that money
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has felt itself in this campaign downticket, inside the republican party. the very fact that an mcconnell and that a ryan and other republican leaders are intimidated to not say anything lest they lose their funders has a major role. i mean, what we should have seen is the republican establishment responding forcefully to many of the statements and attitudes that trump has put out. it's that fear of the dark money that holds them away. >> would one of the toms like to comment on the role of barack obama in explaining the depth of the voter rage? >> i mean, you just think the fact that he is black and you have the enactment of obamacare, which is a redistributional program, shifting benefits and taxes downward to a population that is disproportionately
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minority, contributed to this idea. the two echo each other. he becomes the embodiment of liberalism and he is black. the two conflate. so you then get a higher level of what pollsters call racial affect. >> i agree with that. but obama's more than that. i think he's also the epitome of a meritocracy, someone who goes to good schools and learns a lot and speaks, you know, in very refined ways, not like hillbillies speak. >> a professor. >> a professor. this is the -- >> only for a brief time. >> the race is an important
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part, but it by no means limits the sense of cultural alienation. these are the kind of people that are taking over our country. racism is a part of it. but it's also gender feeling. obama doesn't act like strong males, assertive males are supposed to in many ways, you know? and that has i think opened an avenue for trump. >> another question that thea raised in her presentation that has to do with immigration. and the number of people who are coming into this country, now, number one, a very high number, but number two, of them, many of them are not white. so that adds to the perception and the problem. and i'm wondering if you put those two together, the immigration itself, without any
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linkage, could be a very significant reason for the rage that does exist among the white male, not college educated supporter of donald trump. >> yes. yes. i think immigration is a great example of the way in which cultural anxiety and economic anxiety are intertwined, because so often the conversation about immigration is about certain people taking our jobs or tree trade being a bad economic idea. i think the fact that -- that great map that thea showed, so many states, the largest immigrant population coming from mexico, there again, it's a very kind of clear, blatant target for people to tap into. so i absolutely agree. >> tom?
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>> it's probably important to remember that even when the immigrants were primarily white, once they moved to southern european, and when they involved jews, things got pretty, pretty nasty in our politics back at the early part of the last century. but you do think, and that's the point thea was making, that the period of rapid immigration and its changing composition has returned us to a -- given us a problem. and now, in many ways, our party system isn't able to manage it as well as it has before, for various reasons. and i think that contributes to
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it. one last thing, maybe one of the scariest things about what's going on. there are people who are angry, and then there are people just filled with hate and have been for decades on end, that had hate groups and neo-nazi groups and white supremacists. what's stunning is the extent to which, in their conversations on twitter and on their websites, and now we have good investigative reporting going on following these social media channels and everything, and the extent to which the -- you know, the alt-right, as we call it now, has come to feel they've been brought into the mainstream of american politics by the trump campaign. it's really scary.
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so a lot of this stuff has been around before. but this time it broke through from the fringes to the mainstream. >> and the mainstream, of course, is the fact that donald trump represents one of the two major parties in this country. just to share something with you all, it's kind of interesting, i think, last week trump did a speech down in florida which was different from most of his other speeches in the way in which he delivered it. it wasn't a teleprompter, but he recalls it in full sentences, whole paragraphs, long words, very complicated thoughts. and i was saying to myself, this is not donald trump. so who was it? on a hunch, i read up on some of the editorials that breitbart has been publishing over the last six months. much to my astonishment, the phraseology was exact. the long phrases were simply
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pulled out of editorials that had appeared on breitbart. so here we have now a major candidate who is expressing something that is not within the normal range of our politics, but has broken out of the normal range. at least that's my sense of it. and i wonder if you share that, you panelists share that view. tom? >> i'm a little less pessimistic than you on this. i think it's possible that if you bring alt-right into the mainstream, they're going to be the ones who have to compromise. they're going to have to start dealing with a larger political reality. when they were in isolation off in mountain cabins where they're keeping their, you know, antinuclear devices all wound up, they are totally separate, and they're totally isolated
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from society. if they have to get engaged, they're going to have to learn a little bit about what the real world is or else they're going to just get pushed out again. >> if that was the case, tom, we have found its political expression in trump becoming more a movement toward the center. and he seems to be, in the last couple of weeks, hunkering down now and exaggerating the relationship with the breitbart people rather than putting distance between himself and then. >> i'm talking about the alt-right in terms of storm front and these kind of places. >> montana militia. >> the montana militia. those people have separated themselves, insofar as the society in general, they become part of it, i think it's possible. i'm probably candy-eyed in this point of view, but they will possibly become a little more
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reasonable. >> you guys on "the new york times" are so sensible. [ laughter ] that's wonderful. you want to say something. >> i do. i'm sort of puzzling through this. i'm not sure if i have this right. but i don't think -- i don't think that people -- i think we are setting ourselves up for a bit of a disaster if we discount these people as so far from the mainstream. so for example -- may i read you a quote from a conversation i heard not that long ago among a group of trump supporters. this is a man who is just a regular member of his community, who gets together with a group of his pals every morning in a service station. and i happened upon -- i was visiting them early one morning a few months ago.
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and he seems like a very reasonable person to me. but this is what he said. when i was asking about their support for trump, he said, "it's time for the reckoning. these politicians, they're going to lose their jobs because they haven't represented us, and they've put us in debt. do you even hear from the democrats so far how to clear the debt? all you hear is free education, and that can never happen." he goes on and on. he says, "i think if a guy like that," trump, "got in there, he would probably start to straighten things out so we start paying this debt back some day. everybody in their 70s and 80s and 90s are fine and dandy, but everybody that's behind us," meaning younger people, "brace up, because we're going to head into a third world country. we're heading there."
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this is a pretty regular guy telling me the armageddon is coming. my point is the alt-right is not just among recluses but relatively mainstream people. >> the conspiracies have gone mainstream. if birtherism can, as you said, continue to attract that percentage, there's a lot of people that believe this stuff. and that's -- you know, that's what's scary. what's scary is the rejection of evidence and facts and science. in fact, people -- you were saying this earlier -- follow conversations like this, they'll listen to ours on c-span, and feel, yeah, it's the same old people, you know, ignoring, you
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know -- throwing this stuff at us and they don't -- you know, we know what's going on, they don't know what they're talking abo about. and we can't ever get in a situation where we can actually sit down and talk it out. because they won't do it in congress, because there's not an inclination on the part of republicans to engage in that kind of effort now. >> pat? >> there's some demonization of the right in this situation. if these people are inclined to see birtherism, there must be something underlying that. they're not ignorant, dumb people. there must be something about liberalism and the democratic party that lends itself among some people to producing this kind of idea, that the head of the democratic party, barack obama, is a sort of alien non-american to them. i'm not justifying that point of
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view. but there must be something going on, unless you're going to dismiss this, say, 30% of the population, as a bunch of mentally ill people. >> how would you describe them, tom? >> i'm not saying that, tom. >> but unless you start talking about what is it that is prompting them -- >> well, what is it? >> i think that there is a lot of deep resentment at the democratic party having what ronald reagan tapped into years ago, when he said, i didn't leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me. you see this throughout white working class areas. you see this anger at the left and liberalism. you see it in hillary clinton's e-mails, the e-mails where she tells goldman sachs one thing and says another thing when she's debating with bernie sanders.
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she says things about dodd/frank. >> it really isn't. >> it is. >> read the followup stories. >> wait a minute. hang on. thea, we don't hear you, this is on c-span. do you want to -- >> okay. we can argue this. >> would you like a microphone? >> there is this huge sense that the democratic party is now the party of elites. and that's how the party is perceived. and if you look at the democratic party, who the activi activist wing of the democratic party is made up of, it's elites. i'm part of that elite. most of this room is part of that elite. but that's what the party is, in many respects. and it's going to be perceived that way. people are going to see the party in ways that are not going to be nice and sometimes they're going to be kind of off the
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wall. but there are -- people better do some respecting. >> pat, you want to come in. >> i agree with tom. >> hold that microphone near your mouth. >> i agree with tom on this whole country, that there's going to be a moderating force on the right. it's going to be around the dynamism that is going to occurring after this election. i think there is going to be a three-party civil war inside the republican party. there's going to be the alt-right with trump. that's going to be the libertarians with the koch brothers. and there's going to be the traditional white shoe republicans, john kasich, et cetera. and it's going to be very brutal. they're going to have to find compromise with each other. the only thing that they're going to find compromise on is they all hate hillary clinton and the clinton administration. and i think that they will go into excess. so i think the dynamics here is
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going to have a leveling effect on the right. they are going to i think make it possible because she's a very skilled politician, very skilled. look at the comments of the senators, republican and democrat, when she was a senator. i think it's going to create a dynamic where she will be able to do deals and compromises and have accomplishment and set herself up for a nice rerun in 2020. >> we have ten minutes left. i'm delighted that you have jumped ahead to my final question, because i'm very interested in what you all feel, given the emphasis on the background and the reasons for the voter rage. what is going to happen on november 9th? does the voter rage then just stop? does it get more intensified? what are the reasons, what happens at that point? and with that easy question, catherine, give us the answer.
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or try. >> well, i'm worried about it. i guess i'll answer with a question. and the question in my mind is, just how much establishment pop technicians, elites, from both the democratic party and the republican party, come out in the next few weeks talking about how this is not a rigged election and sort of setting us up for those claims when mr. trump, assuming he does not win, i think it would just be extremely dangerous in terms of fomenting even further anger and very disruptive anger to claim that it was somehow a fraudulent election. i have been very happy to see so many people coming out in the past few days saying, it's a legit election and we'll abide by the results. >> i'm going to jump you, pat, and go to tom.
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tom one, i'll say. and ask you that same thing, tom. november 9th, what is it that in your judgment is going to happen at that point, in terms of voter rage, in terms of where the politics may go? >> if hillary clinton is going to be able to accomplish something, i think she's going to have to have both branches of congress. and i don't think she's going to. odds are that the house will stay republican and the odds are that if anything, the republicans who remain will be more conservative on average than the ones who were there. the middle of the road is always what gets hurt in elections. i foresee a -- frankly, another four years of gridlock, and very unpleasant, and people getting angrier and angrier at inaction.
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i think the prospects in 2018 in the senate are not good for the democrats. and even if they take back the senate in 2018, they could lose it. so that the idea of a government that can coherently do something is going to be problematic. if they get the senate, i think there's going to be a lot of pressure to change the rules on filibusters on supreme court nominations in addition to federal appellate courts, because it looks like the republicans are going to take a very hard line even on supreme court nominations. i think that might be someplace -- and there might even be changes in the filibuster rules more generally speaking. >> tom mann, but you go, let me interject a question. >> okay. >> assuming for a moment that hillary clinton wins, is there anything she can do to head off
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the future that edsall has just described? >> yes, by following edsall's advice and putting everything she can into electing a democratic house as well as a senate, i mean, tom is absolutely right on this. and the notion that sort of an individual, because she has experience in a different context in the senate on second or third level issues, having had some success working with republicans, can't match up with the structural forces that are at work here. and so all this talk about, oh, it's so awful, well, hillary needs to spend her last week laying out a vision so she has a mandate.
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hello? there are no mandates. there are unified governments and divided party governments. and she needs troops. and she needs control. and then she needs to do and make clear that while the democratic party is changing, it's more educated, there are more higher income people, it's still, one, represents the lowest income whites as well as virtually all of the minorities, and that the prime policies being pursued by the other side are -- i mean, paul ryan is attractive in many respects, but he's still singing the ayn rand hymnal. it's stunning how much the program of the national republican party is unresponsive
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to the concerns. it's so cynical, the opposition to government, the demonization of other of other people, withholding leg legitimacy from normal democratic routines. it started with the party and trump pushed it along further, and that's why if we have divided party government, i think the sequence thom laid out is exactly right. >> what thom laid out is you have to have a clinton victory at the presidency and the democrats taking control once again of the senate and the house, but let's say that doesn't happen. where are we then? and i'm trying to get some image of where this country is going to be in a year from now. pat, maybe you can provide us some help.
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>> several things. let's assume that clinton wins, that the democrats take the senate, and that the republicans control the house. i think that's the most likely option. so the question then is how do you craft a strategy that you can implement between inauguration and august. that's the only time she's going to have to do it. you make your changes then and you then you hang onto it. so in the senate, i fully agree with thom. you've got to change the rules of filibuster and confirmation. clinton will have, i think, nan many judicial spots, including one supreme court slot if they don't move on the president obama slot. she'll have that. she'll have a major influence on the courts. there's a lot of trading you can do with that. second thing is inside the house the republican congress is deeply split.
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i agree that you're going to have the freedom caucus and the hard right caucus. they're going to be very tough. they're going to be after paul ryan, and you're going to have the alt right looking to take ryan out for 2020. ryan needs some accomplishments, so it is up for the president to use the bully pulpit to take and find some issues where there is common consent like rebuilding the infrastructure would be one. find two or three issues such as that and then cut a deal. and some of these deals you may have to make in private, but it is possible for her to have real accomplishment by working the politics inside the house. >> that's what she'll try to do, and i think you're right. and i think ryan will be tempted. the problem is that he won't remain speaker.
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i mean, he can't survive with a strategy like that because republicans don't the business with democrats. >> i think that could be to his advantage. he is not going alt right in 2020 if he runs. it would not be to his disadvantage to have the alt right throwing him out. it would be to his advantage to accomplish something. then that gives him up in the civil war that the republicans are going to have. >> it would be good, but then why is he proposing a tax plan in which 99.5% of the benefits go to the top 1%? >> funders would be the answer. >> let's say it's going to have a tough time. i think that's a fair decision and a fair conclusion.
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but in wrapping up, let me first thank the panelists would be quite wonderful. i thank you all very much for that. and i want to thank the speaker for the marvelous keynote address. let us all bear in mind that we are here to commemorate the work and the person of sue tolchin, who was a friend to many of us, and as we have already heard a wonderful mentor for people going for ph.d.s. not just ph.d.s, but people who wanted to get educated what this country was all about. and the books she wrote with her husband marty right here have been great editions the literature and politics of our time, so thank you all very much for being here.
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debate live on c-span 2 to succeed a retiring member of the senate, david vitter. several state senators will take the stage. and at midnight on c-span, republican senator ron johnson and former democratic senator russ feingold debate for the wisconsin seat. on thursday, candidates in ohio meet for another debate, rob portland and ted strickland. c-span where history unfolds daily. join us today at 6:30 p.m.
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eastern for the white house state dinner for italian prime minister matteo renzi. our live coverage includes the rival of the prime minister of his wife, guest dinner arrivals, the grand staircase official photo, and the dinner toasts offered by president obama and prime minister renzi. former obama white house social secretary will join us to talk about food, decor, entertainment, and protocol for the state visit. we'll also revisit previous state dinners under the obama administration. we'll talk to the italian ambassador to the u.s., armando varricchio, and robin givhan will review michelle obama's fashion at state dinners for the last eight years.
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a group of radio talk show hosts from around the country gather to talk about the 2016 presidential election and the state of their industry. among the participants hugh hewitt and thom hartman, joe madison, and larry o'connor. the forum was cohosted by hillsdale college and talkers magazine. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> good morning, i'm the associate vice president for hillsdale college here in washington, d.c. welcome to the allen p. kirby center for constitutional studies and citizenship. hillsdale college is an old college based in hillsdale, michigan, founded in 1844. grateful to god for the blessings of civil and religious liberty. it was the first college to prohibit chartered discrimination by race,
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religion, or sex and was an advocate very much involved in the abolition of slavery. it was also the second college in the nation to grant four-year liberal arts degrees to women. we accept no money from the federal government. we continue this mission of hillsdale college in the classroom and nationwide through numerous outreach programs, charter schools, and the kirby center, our campus here in washington, d.c., which is to extend that teaching mission to the nation's capital. aristotle says that what is most distinctive about man is his speech and his ability to think out loud about the good, the bad, and the just and the unjust. speech, dialogue, discussion, debate is the key to education, which is why radio is important, especially tal
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