Name: How This Election Changes American Politics
Uploaded: 2016-10-19
Duration: 13 min 38 s
Description: Republicans and Democrats won’t be the same

[ MUSIC ] So my answer is Editor of Times have written more than 100 cover stories, several books including the 2012 book the President's Club inside the world's most exclusive fraternity. And Nina, we'll talk about that. And Nina is cochair of Fortune MPW obviously, cofounder of SellersEaston Media and author of several books including for this conversation, Gang of Five, Leaders in the Center of the Conservative Ascendancy, which really examined the last rebellion against the Republican establishment. So we'll hear about that So where to begin. Nancy, how many elections have you covered, would you estimate? This is the sixth. And yes, they're all different and they always surprise you as they should, but obviously I think for all of us nothing has been surprising as this and in a way. That is the most important story to me, of all the meta stories. How is it possible that our politics can shock us this way? That the very nature of our national conversation, can be completely unlike what anyone expected a year ago. And if we don't learn something from that, then all of the pain and suffering over the last year will have been for not. So how is it possible? I mean I didn't know quite how to begin this, but how is it possible and what can we learn? Well, at the smallest level, I think surprise has been a strategy for Donald Trump, and a very successful one. To, keep up a certain level of interest, to people who typically have not been engaged in the political process. Engaged. A lot of his strategy has been about getting non- voters to vote. That's the one of the reasons the polling has been so challenging. The cycle. Cause how do you do a screen of likely voters if likely voters may not be the people who end up being voted. So that's the sort of day- to- say level. But. At a higher level, it's the same thing that affects absolutely everyone in this room and all of our businesses and all of our enterprises, which is that we are in the middle of this astonishing communications revolution. The first big communications revolution which was movable type gave us the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of democratic self- governance Communication is a super force. Well now we have after every campaign in which we always, would assign some reporters to the, what's the internet going to mean for this race. And the answer was always in the end really not very much. Until 2008, where all of a sudden it did make a difference. Well, this year, the way communications has worked, the channels of communication, the nature of engagement, has been completely different, and I think that's one reason why we've been so surprised day in and day out. Nina so much of this of course this whole election has been about disenfranchisement. On the right, what do you thing are the core roots of that, maybe some roots that haven't been so discussed? So I think as Nancy says everything has been amplified right through social media but what's been amplified also has to be looked at and I think it's very important for business leaders to understand because it's going against What's good for business and that is the socioeconomic force that's given rise to anti- immigrants, anti- globalization, anti- free trade, sort of a nativist sensibility. And while some of that's on the left let me just talk about the right which is important. Numbers to look at while the plight of minority communities, we've talked about a lot, economic plight. What's this year and this past year have revealed to us is the plight of the white working class which you keep hearing about but it's really important to understand some of the numbers We have a very historically low labor participation rate. White working class people have dropped out of the labor force in astonishing numbers. Nick Eberstadt, demographer, took a look and found that 6 to 7 million Men, white men are unemployed, well mostly white men are unemployed and they're in prime working age, they're like age 29 to 54. They're not looking for work, they're on disability, they're scrounging off someone, they've disconnected from the work force And, you know, and there's a lot of social pathologies that have gone along with that. And I highly recommend people read this book Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance, which is on the New York Times Best Seller list right now, to get a real sense of a lot of the dysfunction that's in a lot of these communities. The other statistic that's really important to understand Death rates have spiked among whites, middle aged whites without a college education. That's astonishing in an industrialized society, just astonishing, and it's because of drug overdoses, suicides, and this is also among women, obesity, Binging on drink and so on. So, you have this class of people in this country that haven't really been examined or thought about before, but they are really in distress both culturally. Socially and economically and so they have an agenda that is very much in opposition to where the traditional business community has been in the Republican Party. The business community wants immigration reform, wants free trade, wants globalization. But this is a very inward, angry, anxious population that's with us whoever wins this election. And Nancy the seeds of these were sown long ago. These things don't happen overnight, So what do you think this takes its root in beyond what Nina mentioned and for the left as well? It's not limited to just the right. Well it's important that we know that it's not only happening here. That the forces that are so disrupting everything here we're seeing Across Europe, in the UK with the Brexit vote, in France with the rise of [ UNKNOWN ], in Germany there's this extraordinary upheaval that I think is partly trying to replace a global order that Harry Truman helped to build after the war and that kept the peace. And drove unprecedented peace and prosperity for 70 years. This has been the most peaceful 70 years since the Roman Empire and now the trying to adjust that to the 21st century to allow for new players, new markets, new manufacturing, is causing distress all around the world. It's not at all unique to the United States and it's a massive undertaking And I also think it is connected, and this is not only about economic dislocation and people whose jobs have been outsourced. I think it is about the rise of nationalism that we're seeing everywhere, and that we're seeing in this country, where we are having a very different kind of debate over the nature of American identity, and American values, and cosmopolitanism versus parochialism. That's an argument that is taking place in different forums all around the world and it is not going to end on November 8th no matter what the outcome is. This, I think it's very important to understand, as much as we all want this race to be over It's just the beginning, this is not, nothing is going to end on election. There are some parallels to what's happening to Republican party that you win into in your branch, I think it's so interesting and often times we don't really think about the historical context, I mean Nancy touch on it a little bit, but tell us About the last kind of big rift in the right and what-- nothing has came out of that. I'm sure and so my book chronicles the whys of conservatives on campus in the 70s rebellion against 60s culture. They came to Washington with Regan in the 80s And during that period they really spent as much time fighting the Republican establishment as they did the Democrats. And these were people like Ralph Reed with, [ CROSSTALK ] Ralph Reed with the Religious Right, Grover Nyquist with tax cutting and Bill Crystal, Straussian neoconservative And a couple of others. And they were contrarian, they were edgy, this is the period when you started hearing that term rhino, republican in name only, they didn't like to compromise. But here's the difference There, and by the way, they followed Newt Gingrich who liked to describe politics as war without blood. And they would quote George Patton, and they were just like gung- ho, right? Edgy and ideological The difference is their hero was a President, a two term President, former Governor Ronald Regan. Who actually did believe in compromise. And they also believed in winning these activist, they believed in winning elections through the process. They didn't, they weren't out there just to take a stand and not win, so they eventually. Came into the Republican Party, and their message became the Republican Party. So the Republican Party, which didn't really care about cutting taxes as much, that became central. Through Grover Norquist's tax cutting pledge. That all these candidates had to sign. We saw the rise of the religious Right under Ralph Reed. Which became a, so social issues became a part of the Republican party in a way they weren't before that. They weren't before. So it became. It came in and very much became part of the Republican party. I don't see this movement. This movement is So much at odds with the establishment of the party and you see of course Trump is the person they look to. Which is a very different figure than Ronald Reagan. So I don't see this ending well for the Republican party. So Nancy, you mentioned after November eighth You know, let's say Trump doesn't win. Those feelings become only more calcified and concentrated and more resentment. So, you know, what, what happens, I mean I guess that's one question. What happens to the Republican Party no matter what? You know, I go back and forth as I think a lot of people do, between being very frightened by what we're hearing and by the delegitimizing of democratic institutions and processes itself which is very disturbing, against a history in this country of enormous resilience and. And so, being an optimist by nature, I have to hope that part of what has been driving the passion about this year. And it's fascinating that you have the two most unpopular candidates ever, who are the candidates in the most watched race. Ever, it isn't the people have tuned out, they've actually dug in to follow this more closely than they ever have. And I think some part of that reflects a real desire on people's part to figure out how we move forward as a country and feeling like our institutions at least at a national level are not working. And the willingness to entertain the idea Of a radical change in direction with a radically different kind of candidate, is partly a reflection of feeling like somebody has to just start over. And so, where I take a certain amount of hope is that at the local level, in a lot of towns and cities, in local governance, there's a lot of innovation, there's a lot of creativity that there may need to be, no matter what the outcome is, a kind of welling up Of new solutions and new approaches to governance because there's despair on both sides about a culture of no that has made it much easier to keep things from happening than to make things happen. And that is a bipartisan spirit of discouragement. When we did a poll about this election last week, the overwhelming feeling Among Democrats and Republicans with disappointment. They want to see something that works. And so I am hoping that that actually motivates us to figure out a solution that is not just burn the house down after this is over. Nina, what would you say about that? Well I would say, just in terms of the future of the Republican Party, keep in mind that right after the 2012 election, The RNC and Reince Priebus came out with this looking back at what happened when Mitt Romney lost to say, it was a look back, and said we actually have to expand the tent demographically. We have to appeal more to women, we have to appeal more to Hispanics And I still think that that's where the party is. The party needs to expand demographically. The demographics are running against the party. So I think it's there is a, I think the Republican party nationally right now is in a real dangerous zone. I would remind you however that at the state level the Republican party is thriving I mean. Most governors are republican. Republicans have a trifecta, meaning controlling both chambers in states and the governor in an enormous number of states. And I think democrats it's only seven states. So they're thriving on a state level but for republicans to win nationally > You've got to go back to that post 2012, look back and make the party a winning party nationally. We'll just have to wait and see what happens, as they say. Thank you so much we have to leave it there. Thank you to both of you for your wisdom. [ applause ] [ music ]

Republicans and Democrats won’t be the same