from an overflow. who would need to be forced to avoid behavior that might result in hospitalizations? and then there was the argument, well, but the imperial college said 2.3 million americans will die unless we take away freedom. what if they predicted 30 million? what amount of force from government would have meant anything at that point? >> sunday night on q&a, author john tamny on his book "when politicians panics." sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. joining thisfi morning, mat

lewis. you can find him at mattlewis.org, and thedailybeast.com, and on twitter. we are talking about party politics. you wrote in a recent piece that the honeymoon is over for the administration. reality has set in. why? >> well, reality has set in. joe biden wins the presidency. that gives everyone a big boost. whoever wins the presidency thinks that they have a mandate but usually they don't. his mandate was do not be donald trump, but people who run for president have all sorts of ideas and plans, but i think biden's agenda was going to be fairly modest until he won those senate seats down in georgia. all of a sudden, he has the presidency, and democrats control both houses of congress.

then there was a sense, wow, we could be fdr, we can be lbj. we can pass a lot of progressive legislation. in a way that almost wasn't a good thing for joe biden. the expectations were raised. and then they do pass the covid relief bill, the $1.9 trillion bill. just steamrolled republicans. passed it very quickly. it set the expectation that this would be easy. and it hasn't been in the last several weeks at least. >> you wrote, joe biden can quit trying to be fdr or lbj. he can just be joe biden. he can reinvent himself and rewrite his own narrative. he can stop pretending that he has a mandate for sweeping changes.

he can start by acknowledging that he was elected to steady the ship, not rebuild it.ot >> i believe that joe biden's mandate was, don't be donald trump. it was not, pass a lot of f progressive legislation. i don't think that's why joe biden won the presidency. itf was a combination of folks, some of whom voted for donald trump last time. and i think that there was a sense in america that donald trump was very chaotic and we needed to return to normalcy. that's why they voted for joe biden. then, all of a sudden, he has this golden opportunity where it looks like he might be able to pass a lot of legislation.

in some ways, i think that was a trap for joe biden. then you start to say that success is measured by virtue of how much you accomplish and how many points you put on the scoreboard. the problem is that was never joe biden's raison d'etre. his promise was to be a calming forcein and sort of restore normalcy. joe biden, just by virtue of being himself, can do that and has done that to a large degree. i think it's about expectations. if joe biden democrats set up the expectation that success means passing a whole bunch of legislation, they may be disappointed. pause they just don't have the votes. lbj and fdr both had overwhelming majorities of democrats to work with.

joe biden has a very narrow th majority. so i think it is time to reset the expectations. he can still be a very important, consequential president. i fear for his sake that if his success is measured solely by how much legislation he passes, it may end up being disappointing.nd >>n democratic callers, call i this morning and let us know how you think the president can be consequential. if you voted for him, i am curious about what you think the president can do to be insequential. or if you disagree with matt lewis, some callers, those that supported the president, he flipped five states.r he won by 7 million votes. and he flipped four senate seats.

why not go for big change? >> part of the problem is, i don't think he can do it. you are what your record says it is. if joe biden passes lots of record legislation, i will have been proven wrong. but the problem for now is that even to pass things via reconciliation, there are specific types of legislation as that can pass. not everything can pass via reconciliation. but just to do that, he needs to have all 50 democratic senators supporting him, and he just doesn't have that on a lot of t things. manchin and sinema, just to name the most prominent democrats who are not necessarily on board

with everything that joe biden might want to pass. if he can do it, he can do it. i am skeptical of the fact that he is able to pass a lot of landmark legislation.es i would say, you know, when i look back at other presidents who are considered great in recent history, i think of ronald reagan. he was obviously a two-term president. he passed a lot of legislation and did things like tax cuts and amnesty, which may not be wh popular with some of our republican callers today..k he did social security reform. but when you look at what are the most important things that reagan did, there were things like winning the cold war and d restoring faith and optimism in america. they required legislation, sort of, but they're not legislative bills, per se. these are things that encompass a lot of things, including rhetoric.

joe biden right now is abroad. and that is -- what he does, for example, with his upcoming meeting with putin, is a big deal. and that is not going to require congress to make that a victory for him, if he ends up having a goodug showing and something go comes from it. i am not suggesting that joe biden should give up legislation. i'm not suggesting he should revert to the pen and phone and startr. doing a whole bunch of things t via executive order. but i think it's time now that he's hitit a bit of a wall, to re-evaluate what he wants from his presidency. and maybe reset the expectations. >> help our viewers understand who joe manchin is, and the role he plays. >> he is a u.s. senator from west virginia, a former governor

of west virginia, a democrat, sort of an old-school democrat. he is from the days when west virginia was a predominantly democratic state.. west virginia is obviously a rural state that donald trump won by almost 40 points last time. so politically speaking, he has different political incentives than other democrats, certainly than alexandria ocasio-cortez, for example, in the house. a more progressive member from new york. manchin is more conservative and more old-school.t he has different political incentives. he probably, on principle, has different ideas. b he was mentored by robert byrd, the former senator from west o

virginia, who was big an of unofficial or maybe even d official historian of the senate and had great belief in institutions, including things like the filibuster and preserving things like the filibuster. and i think that that informs his politics today and is part of the controversy. and the anger that a lot of democrats have for him at this moment. >> let's talk about the challenges for the republican party. you wrote this article.mp abortion is why never trump republicans can't work with democrats.s. whathe do you mean? >> there's a sense out there thatum people who are never tru conservatives should give up on the republican party. and throw inco with the democra. and basically become democrats. i think there's a schism, there

are ten people in america who are never trump conservatives. mosthi of them live in or near washington, d.c. i consider myself loosely part of this group. there is even disagreement among us and some never trump conservatives think that the republican party is long gone. and the only game in town is the democratic party. therefore, we should join with the democrats and vote for joe biden. others, i think, here, you know, you have even elected officials, people like liz cheney, adam kinzinger, barbara comstock, who want c to reform and restore th republican party. my argument has been -- it is a debatable question, whether or not the republican party could ever be restored to its former glory.

but in terms of joining with the democrats, there are probably a lot of reasons not to, if you are a conservative. fiscalss policy. but theth one issue that i think is a moral issue is the pro-life issue.e the democrats -- joe biden actually at one point was a pro-life democrat. and then later, he was pro-choice. however he opposed using taxpayer funding for abortion. just in the last couple of years he has reversed his position on that. even if you hate a lot of things that donald trump and the party

has done, it's a huge obstacle to join a partt that has a vastly different worldview. >> let's go to henry in michigan. go ahead. >> caller: good morning. here is the way that i see things. joe biden and the democrats have a very unique problem here. and that is that about 70% of the republican party is fascisty and has authoritarian leanings because of their devotion to donald trump. so joe biden is a seasoned politician. just as joe manchin is. so messaging is the number one key. they have legislation that they are trying to pass. it has 70% approval amongst the entire electorate in the country. they have to find a way to message, to get the message

across to people that it is the republicans who are obstructing this progressive improvement that joe biden wants to build america back better. so joe manchin has to do the bipartisanship route. he has to play the theater route. and joe biden wants him to do that. because we have to show the american people who it is that is obstructing the improvements that joe biden wishes to bring this country. we're 50 years behind in infrastructure, in our social infrastructure, inrd our police reform, we have been retarded as society by a small, 30% group of the american body politic. who have right-wing leanings, who are extremists on the far right. we need to find a message. >> let's have matt respond to that.t:

>> a few things there. one, democracy is messy. talking about fascism, if we had a dictator, we could probably do infrastructure quickly. we have a very messy system. it has checks and balances, some people mightga even call that gridlock. i'm not sure if manchin is engaging in theater. trying to play it out in front of the american public, and if it doesn't work, that would maybe give democrats a permission structure to act more unilaterally after they've kpus exhausted the attempts to do bipartisanship. the one thing i do agree with is what we need is for some leadership.

for someone like joe biden. i do not want to criticize joe biden. a i don't think any of our recent presidents have done this. bill clinton and reagan did this successfully, i would say. we need to go to the american public. and to really say, to use the bully pulpit, and to use your moral authority, and to kind of call on the public to go over the heads of the other elected officials of the other party and pressure them to do the right thing. again, we live in a very polarized country right now. it's unclear to me, if there's leverage to push the opposing party to do the right thing. but i'd love to see that happen. if joe biden could say, we need to do infrastructure, and win over the american public

sufficiently, that would be a positive thing. it has not happened in america in a long time.st >> on infrastructure, a bipartisan block in the senate setf to sell its compromise on infrastructure. g what is the possibility of this getting passed and signed by the president? >> this will tell us a lot. either republicans are engaging in good faith, which is to say there are a handful of republicans, maybe not even ten but people like susan collins, mitt romney and others who are sincerely negotiating in good faith. want to do something on infrastructure, and are willing to make a deal. or they are not. maybe they are stalling and this is a mcconnell ploy to drag out, run out the clock on joe biden so that he cannot accomplish things. we might be about to find out.

i'm actually very curious. i don't know the answer to it. i hope that republicans are just holding to their principles. i share concerns about the price tag on some of these things.gs if you start just spending trillions, i think joe biden had $6 trillion in mind. then you w don't think there's going to be problems with the budgets and inflation and other negative externalities. i think republicans have a defensible point about wanting to control some of this spending. i think we do need infrastructure. i am curious as to how this plays out. if republicans do this whole lucy pulling the football away from charlie brown at the last l minute act, then that might persuade someone like joe manchin to go ahead and supporte the democrats, if they act unilaterally.

>> robert, in oklahoma, republican. >> caller: yes. you know, i was -- in 1960, i remember reading about a man who went to jail for 12 years for r smoking marijuana.xt and in 1970, i was sworn in. the very next year, they decriminalized marijuana and i think around 1980, they passed a law that you could have t marijuana, but you couldn't deposit it in a bank. they put tax on marijuana so high that it was cheaper to buy it on the street. mr. lewis said that they attempted to bring america back to what it was.

well, remember, i have 80 yearss on this earth and the politics have never been good. >> so, we were talking earlier about how drug laws should be changed in this country. the house is set to bring up legislation to decriminalize marijuana, tax it, put the money back into the communities. chuck schumer is looking at legislation too. cann republicans get on board? >> i think it is definitely possible. this is one issue that we have talked about the cultural wars.k the fact that this is not a terribly controversial issue anymore speaks to how things have shifted.ft there was a time when this was a hot button political issue and people would have been very d

divided about it, talking about this as a gateway drug. the fact that i do not think i have heard any caller yet who opposes decriminalizing marijuana.ri that suggests there are probably a lot of republicans who would be fine with it. it will be curious though. one trend that we are seeing is a spike in violent crime in major cities. and this is something i am keeping an eye on. as it pertains to joe biden, and issues he has to confront. things like inflation, the border crisis, and crime would be the three things that i am watching that joe biden really has to be wary of. you can imagine that if crime once again becomes a major issue in america, that public opinion could shift again on the issue of marijuana. but as of right now, i think you will get plenty of republicans

probably who will support this. >> what is the impact of o marjorie taylor greene. yesterday, she held a news conference to apologize for an offensive holocaust comparison after visiting the holocaust museum. you have democrats who wanted to put a censure resolution on the floor, censuring her for those comments. c then you have republicans wanting to censure democrats like congresswoman omar for her anti-israel rhetoric.t but sticking with marjorie taylor greene, what is the impact of her election on the republican party? >> first of all, i was a little bit happy and surprised to see her apologize. that's something that is rare in politics today. we have seen a message from donald trump that you never apologize. that was sort of the mantra.th

so it was different and noteworthy that she apologized. i think that she owed an apology. it's good that she did it. otherwise, i think i kind of look at marjorie taylor greene as more of a symptom of a broken political system than someone who will be driving things that much. t i know that she drives a lot of news coverage because of her outrageous rhetoric, but mainly, the takeaway is that she is a symptom of a very dysfunctional political system.f the fact that she got kicked off of her committees and still raised over $3 million in the first quarter speaks to some ro real institutional problems.

it used to be that there were party bosses in smoke filled il back rooms. they decided who nominees were. there were some problems with that system. but you probably at least got some competent, experienced people nominated to represent your party.. when they ran for president, senate, or congress. we have a different system now where you can be super outrageous, and you can even get kicked off of your committees, and your political party -- then bigwigs in your party, the gatekeepers, the elites, the u. leaders of your party do not have much leverage over you. it sounds almost like a utopian thing. you can go straight to the voters and you can crowdsource and they can fund you. it is actually really bad.

we need some gatekeepers because the inmates are running the asylum. and i think that marjorie taylor greene is probably a prominent example of that. >> erin in texas writes, i think party politics could be tempered if the administration made changes to secure the border. we need acknowledgment of m the success of operation warp speed from him. >> well, look, i think that not everything that donald trump did was bad. some of the things that donald trump did, let's take the border. the implementation of it i think was flawed and uncompassionate.i but then i think joe biden made a mistake coming in, signaling that the border was open again.t and that borders do not even exist, so we had this rush of an

people and rush of migrants to the border which led to a humanitarian crisis. is and now even kamala harris is saying, don't come to the border.ngiv and she is angering some progressives. what we have to do -- i agree. i think it is bad if joe biden can't control the border. ofof the things that can hurt h, inflation, crime, a border crisis is not good for joe biden. if a country is going to be successful, we need a lot of immigrants and legal immigrants. i also think we need to control our border. you simply cannot have people coming into your country illegally. you are not a country if you bo can't control your border. also, we need to be humane and compassionate about how we police it.

and also if people really are fleeing, we need to have a system to rapidly adjudicate that and determine if they can stay or not. so i guess i am a moderate on this. we have to control the border. i think it's in everyone's best interests, including joe biden, to do it. we also need to find a way to do it compassionately. we have not been able to strike that balance unfortunately in a long time. >> robert is a republican in florida.? welcome to the conversation. >> caller:mm that's a perfect segue to my question. joe biden. does he support sanctuary cities?an if he does, it is in violation of current immigration law. how can he be a president sworn to uphold the laws and ignore de sanctuary cities? it's a joke. for the vice president to say, c

do not come here, when you have dozens of cities that are saying to immigrants, if you can get in here, break our laws and game t the system, we will take care of you.di i think the president is doing a great disservice to america.a. if i'm wrong, can you explain to the viewers how sanctuary cities benefit america? thank you. >> i am against sanctuary cities. i don't know where joe biden stands on it. my guess is that it would be hard to find out. it is one of the benefits of joo biden is that he has not, during the presidency, during the presidential primary season, when a lot of democrats like kamala harris were endorsing the medicare for all and the defund

the police, kind of staking out progressive controversial positions that were very popular on woke twitter, joe biden resisted the urge, or if he e did support things, there were always caveats and nuances.as it was very hard to label joe biden. and now sometimes people want to call joe biden radical socialist and marxist, and it is kind of laughable to say that. he is a democrat and a liberal. and you could even argue that in some ways, just because of the way our politics have shifted, the most progressive president, but he has also avoided so many of those land mines, those issues that are hot button culture war issues. we are probably one google search away from knowing the answer to this, but it certainly has not hurt him so far.

>> let's go to terry in california, democratic caller. >> caller: yes, good morning. my comments are as follows. we are constantly talking abouti bipartisanship, however, the republican party's mission is to make sure that the democrats are not able to implement anything. their whole, entire goal is to block joe biden from doing anything. and every time a democrat gets in office, the republican party does this. they talk about constantly tax, tax, tax or always spending. however, let's look at the debt that we are currently in thanks to the past administration. it boggles my mind that my percentage of taxes is higher than those of proctor & gamble. when you look at the corporate

tax structure. i'm justhe amazed. yet we continue to bash the democratic party by saying that they will not do anything. we want bipartisanship, when your whole, entire goal is to shut it down. >> matt lewis? >> it definitely seems that way. what is interesting, if you go back andlo look, for example, a barack obama's presidency, there was a lot more bipartisan accomplishment thanwe people appreciate or realize. i've been surprised by that, in fact, myself. we think of these issues that get covered on cable news. liken the fight over obama car for example. there are a lot of things that happened in congress, a lot of bipartisan legislation that does not get in the headlines. having said that, i do think

that in the last decade or so, we've had the sense that the way tony win back power is to stop e other party from accomplishing anything. and that's a different dynamic. there was a time when democrats had been really dominant. they controlled the house for r something like four decades. and the knock on republicans were that they would go along to get along. that they were complicit in this. newt gingrich came along and said, no, we are not going to a make deals and take our share of the crumbs left over. we are going to fight.o and that probably began the political era that we are in, . for better or worse. i think that part of the problem is that there is not a dominant political party.

if you look, since 2000, we had the 2000 election, which was obviously ndincredibly close. and we've had thehe control of e house switch back and forth. control of the senate.t there hasn't been one political party that has emerged as the dominant party. some of that is because republicans have been able to win by virtue of things like the electoral college. where you can win the presidency without the popular vote. but that is, you know, that's beside the point. the fact is, neither party has been able to put together a coalition that would make them dominant. if one political party is dominant for long enough, the e other political party will realize, in theory, that they have to cooperate. h but that has not been the case. the lesson has been that

obstruction works.s. and if you prohibit the party in power from accomplishing things, then you will get back in power. that is obviously such a horrible system, but that is . kind of where we are right now. >> republican from georgia. >> caller: hello. how are you doing? i just want to say, if you do not go back in history and look at both political parties, you do not realize what we have here today. my history with the political party started with eisenhower. then kennedy, then through all the different republicans and democratf presidents. you see that back in the day, some of them had the same ideas, like kennedy had low taxes would

produce a viable economy. now you move through, like, nixon. he had good ideas and policies.o but he had bad intentions. moving through the history, now we are here with the democratic party.ouha like he said, if you have a party that is dominant for a long period of time, then the other party has to come in and cooperate to get anything done.t well, that works for both parties. if you don't work together, you come to where you are at now.ci the democrat party has gone so far left that they want socialism or communism. and they want to be the dominant party. what is the dominant party in russia and china? communism. all the other parties, they would have to come in along wite the program, but what you have to vote for, you don't vote for the person or the ideology..

you vote fores their policies. if the person has good policies, and they work for you, that's what you vote for. i don't care if you are republican or democrat, but i do not think you could get a ri communist party to do the right thing because they do not care about how you vote. y they just care about your money and that you work for the state. >> okay. matt t lewis? >> yeah, a few things there.ee it is interesting to see how the political parties realign and reform. in many ways, the republican party which is really focused on winning working-class white meng it's the fdr coalition. minus, maybe minus african-americans. although republicans, at least with donald trump, made some strides there. but the working class white and

populist votes were the trump coalition. the caller mentioned kennedy and nixon. nixon created the epa and did wage and price controls. this is a weird business.nge just the way that things shift, and if we are not careful, we could lose track of that. the caller also talked about things like communism. and i have to say, again, if one political party were to be dominant for long enough, it ise like a bully on the playground. you do not have a lot of fight if there is an established bully. when the different sides think that there is a competition. i i and the next election they could win.y among the many scary developments that we are seeing is that these two sides are e becoming more radical.

we have had some callers referring to republicans as ar having an authoritarian or fascist strain.. the last caller talked about democrats as communists. i think in modern american politics certainly, we were much more centrist.nt we would call bill clinton a communist, but certainly right now, i think joe biden obviously has a moderate temperament.k maybe he's l the exception to t rule of people i'm talking about. when you look at people like omar on the left and greene on the right, they are not president, but you can begin ton see how the extremes in our politics are certainly becoming more mainstream and prominent.

>> eddie in los angeles, an independent. >> caller: yes, good morning. two things. everybody keeps talking about communism here, but this is a i fascist government. carp corporations and politics are hand-in-hand. that is why corporations, nobody goes to jail, but they want to be known as a person. look at the way that wells fargo does business.s. s they should not even be allowed. but let's get back to immigration and the illegal situation. this is another, how can i say, the definition of the democrats and republicans' racism. it's to control the black community. and this is exactly what you're doing. to get employed now in the black communitiesel you must be bi-lingual.me

you are telling your citizens, not only must we learn english but spanish. you are telling them that we can come over here and if you want english, press 1. this is crazy, but it is a racist situation because the biggest employer of illegals is the government. and that is crazy. it is like getting a license and saying, we are going to automatically register you to vote.st so all you have to do is show your license. >> we'll leave it there. matt lewis? >> i don't think immigration is a conspiracy theory. maybe democrats like a lot of immigration because they assume, maybe wrongly, that immigrants will be more likely r to vote for democrats, but i don't think there is a grand conspiracy theory to keep down african-americans. what i would say, however, is there has always just been this

assumption that the way to win hispanic votes and other minority votes is to be pro-immigration and pro-amnesty. i'm not saying that this caller is representative of a large swath of voters, however you can see that there clearly are americans out there who are minorities, who see immigration, and illegal immigration differently.u you could be someone who immigrated to this country from central america and resent other people coming in illegally. who may end up driving down the price of labor. it is a complicated issue. the fact that donald trump did surprisingly well among hispanics in places like florida speaks to this notion, this

whole idea that the way to attract immigrants and minorities is to be open borders, that is not necessarily a correct analysis. >> matt lewis writes for the daily beast. you can find him on matlouis.org on thedailybeast.com and on twitter. thank you for the conversation. >> thank you. c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we're funded by companies like these, and comcast. >> comcast is partnering with 1,000 community centers so students can get the tools they need for anything. >> comcast supports c-span,

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