The Choice, Episode 1, After the conventions

[Music] I'm John gear and this is the choice podcast dedicated to discussing the 2024 election with my friend John meum I'm John meum I'm here to take care of John gear uh who who's having some fashion issues with his jacket um which we were in class a little while ago and I had a picture of Ted Knight from The Mary Tyler Moore Show uh on screen to bring Cultural Literacy of the 19 1970s to the uh the Youth of Vanderbilt yes and I and I have to say that uh this jacket uh which was chosen by my wife um I would say the fact that John has a problem with it suggests to me that I'm on The Cutting Edge and so but here we are talk to talk about the 2024 uh race and John you you kind of proposed this uh idea last spring and kind of what was the motivations behind it well as you may recall uh we did this in 2020 and I got an unusual amount of reaction to it um and what it what struck me about that was though there is this tsunami of uh opinion and information and perspective on politics there's not a whole lot of dare I say it and I'm saying the bar high for us uh a kind of civilized conversation where to use your point there's actual evidence involved and I just thought uh given Vanderbilt's remarkable place in the culture as a place uh I describe Vanderbilt and a graduates a sharp but not sharp elbowed and uh so let's see if we can at least try to be as good as they are that's that's right I mean this is you know John and I along with Josh Clinton and Nikki hemmer are teaching 1100 students this semester in Langford Auditorium it's uh it's great fun but the students themselves are all there to to learn and in fact one of the things we did a class survey and it turns out nearly all of them believe that Joe Biden won the election that there wasn't uh many who think that Biden actually lost the election that it was stolen from Donald Trump and that's important and not not as a partisan point of view but playing off on what John just said is it our commit and when I say R it's not just myself or Professor meum but it's the University's commitment as well is we have to be committed to evidence that we're not committed to ideology because if you let ideology be your guidepost you're going to be wrong about half the time but if you let evidence be your guidepost you're not going to be right all the time but you're going to be right at a higher proportion of the time and that's really critical and it also then allows you to have a conversation that isn't filled with attacks and accusations but rather one that seeks to to advance the the conversation to let people know what this choice that we face in 2024 is all about yeah well to Jump Right In I mean we we uh if we had been here on the 4th of July it would be a very different uh convers it would have been a very different conversation than it is here on the eve of Labor Day and we really haven't seen uh since 1968 a presidential campaign where the structure was as fundamentally altered uh as it has been in 20124 uh going into June 27th uh President Biden was facing off against uh former president trump it seemed that was the reality of the of the campaign and now it's not and I think president Trump's had a hard time adjusting to that so far uh but but my own view of what uh happened in the debate in Atlanta and in President Biden's ultimate decision is that fate and history uh brought Joe Biden to the Pinnacle of power at a very late season in his life and he's my friend I help him when I can uh but I'm not a Democrat uh and I their policy issues on which I disagree uh with the president that said uh I believe he's a constitutionalist I believe that he is fundamentally uh devoted to the rule of law and the building of consensus that would enable a very complicated disputatious uh Democratic Republic to continue to survive and maybe even Thrive and he recognized uh their political and Actuarial reality and I think uh made a uh very difficult uh and ultimately Noble decision to stand aside and it's you know what 90 days to go 95 days to go right now it looks as though if you were standing in President Biden shoes it was the right decision uh to me the choice the country faces is less about policy and more about temperament and Devotion to a constitutional order and that seems sort of upper middle brow I'm not going to say high brow but upper middle brow but I believe it and I think that what um the the stakes are do you want someone who is devoted to an experiment toward a more perfect union uh or do you want someone who has shown that he's willing to put uh his own interest ahead of the Constitution and it's I don't want to say it's it's not that it's simple but it is straightforward yeah and I think this is the under normal conditions where you were weren't talking about the stakes of the of the Constitution so to speak if Biden was struggling or whoever the nominee would have been in in similar situations it would have happened the person would have lost and you would have had the next person you know the in this case the Republican nominee become president that wouldn't have been a problem because while the policies might not be ideal there wasn't any threat to the foundations of the of the country and again for some people that sounds partisan but that's not designed to be partisan again this commitment to the rule of law it's commitment to evidence um that we absolutely have to be driven by and I think the you know my concern for the country and this is why the choice matters so much isn't um an ideological one it's the fact that we have become untethered to evidence that you can't have a functioning democracy without both sides showing some Fidelity to the evidentiary base they should be able to spin it their way that is to the Democrats want to talk about job growth they want to talk about net income they don't want to talk about inflation why because that's a story that doesn't help them so they get to spin it one way the Republicans should be able to talk about it in another way but instead what we're facing is a set of claims that just aren't empirically accurate um Biden's had more job growth for example than did when Trump was President that's just true you know crime rates are down but yet that's not necessarily the rhetoric and so I worry not from a policy point of view because I myself um very much like my like Professor mechum I'm a raging moderate I am you know not on the left side of the spectrum of the right side of the spectrum and I also know and I take a page from Howard Baker our esteemed sen former Senator uh from uh Tennessee that both sides can be right at a particular points time point in time and we need to recognize that we need to be faithful to the evidence and that's why this Choice matters so much why this election matters and when you think about this election compared to lots of other pre previous every candidate will tell you this is the most important election of a generation this is going to be arguably one of the two or three most important elections in American history period so it's not just for this generation but it's for the the broader SK time of American History which is you know well over 240 years at this stage so it's you know it's it's important yeah I mean 1800 was the first transfer of power from one party to to another uh when Jefferson succeeded uh John Adams uh 1828 well I'd say 1824 uh was vital in that Andrew Jackson wins the popular vote uh wins a plurality electoral college but not a decisive number so it goes to the House of Representatives Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams uh strike a agreement uh totally fine by the way I mean nothing wrong with that uh unless you're J Jackson uh who did hashtag it uh he called it hash corrupt bargain uh but to me one of the most fascinating things about 1824 uh particularly in a world where uh the 45th president is often compared to Andrew Jackson is it never occurred to Jackson to send a mob to the capital uh in 1825 in that winter he came back to Nashville he ran again he obeyed the uh Customs uh remarkabl remarkably so because you're only talking about 35 years or so of experience at that point um and then he wins of course in 1828 uh 1860 1864 vital elections for all the obvious reasons um I would argue we then kind of zip ahead a bit to uh 1932 uh president Rose uh Governor Roosevelt at that time uh defeats uh president President Hoover Uh 1948 is fascinating because you have four candidates uh representing uh really the whole spectrum of American politics you have a traditional Republican and uh Thomas stey you have a traditional Democrat and Harry Truman you have the segregationist Dixiecrats and STM Thurman and the progressives in Henry Wallace uh and Truman narly narly wins that 1952 is vital uh at least heading into uh the general election because the reason Dwight Eisenhower ran for president in 1952 having resisted uh importuning from both parties to become president as early as 1948 was because Robert Taff the then FrontRunner for the Republican nomination refused to agree to support NATO and isenhower believed and we have to credit this because if he had simply wanted to be president he would already have been president he was perfectly willing to stay at Colombia uh he was president of Columbia University um go to Augusta and play golf you know he was he was living his best life as we say now uh but Taft wouldn't commit to Collective Security and Eisenhower was always fully aware I think nobly so that his Fame had been purchased by the blood of others and the notion that the legacy of World War II would simply have been a few years as a seura between the second world war and a third world war was something he could not abide and so he wins in 1952 parenthetically we also wouldn't have gotten the war in court without uh Eisenhower winning because Stevenson would never have appointed Earl Warren to be the Chief Justice um 1960 is vital in retrospect less so uh in real time um there's a great story about Dean aeson writing a note after the first debate between Kennedy and Nixon uh to Bob love it I think saying these two bore the hell out of me because so many people saw them as kind of interchangeable uh World War II younger officers uh 68 is vital uh obviously uh because Nixon emerging from the chaos of that year was a probably the last severe stress test of the Constitutional order we're talking about and to his credit I think uh Nixon largely governed from the center and when he broke the law he had a sense of Shame and followed the law um 2000 so much of what's happened in the 20 1st Century would have been different if vice president Gore had become president Gore and 2016 is clearly one of the great inflection elections as Is 2020 and I would argue that we have to view 2024 as the third part of a Trilogy that starts in 2016 and we won't really know the end of that story or even the middle of that story until we know who wins this year yeah no that's that's right this is a story that is yet to be to be fully written you know I I think back on all these these campaigns and they're all really important one of the things that I've been trying to think about and I know you have as well is you know the 2024 election the the the electoral map has been shaken up all of a sudden now kamla Harris has a couple of paths to to winning the the Electoral College and really Trump only has one path he has to puncture the blue wall the states of Pennsylvania M Michigan and Wisconsin if he's going to win he's not going to win the popular vote um he's basically gotten about 46% maybe 46.5% in the last two elections he's unlikely to to do a lot better in this this next one but because the way the colleges Works he could potentially win if he manages to eek out narrow narrow victories but the last time that we saw a big shake shake up of the poll standings of this kind of magnitude was 1992 and it's worth thinking a little bit about that campaign not because it was it was CR critical in the sense of shaping policy of course it did but the stakes weren't nearly as high as we're talkinging about in 20124 but people have to be reminded that at the start of the summer in 20 in uh 1992 Bill Clinton was third in the National polls Ross perau was neck and neck with then Vice President Bush who was going to get the Republican nomination it looked like perau might just win President Bush H 92 right I'm sorry President Bush misspoke President Bush and Ross perau were neck-and-neck it was quite possible for perau to win at that point in time and Clinton was almost an afterthought he was struggling he had problems with his own personal record there was lots of problems and then perau pulls out suddenly and Clinton has his his his debate his convention nominates Gore they look young they look vibrant and all of a sudden he sares to the leadership of the polls and leads in the polls never surrenders it and goes on obviously to be president that was a big shakeup obviously was different than this one because it was a third party was involved and Ross perau came back into that race eventually and still managed to get 19% of the vote which is an amazing Testament to Ross perau especially when you think about what's just happened with Robert Kennedy MH um he was falling like a stone and decided to uh to drop out endorse Trump people can speculate about that all they want but most third party candidates the real lesson of Kennedy and most third party candidates is they become a footnote in history for the most part and that's not true for Ross perau um he managed to come back and suggest that if he hadn't dropped out you know maybe he would have won and that would have been a real change in in Party politics but of course that didn't that didn't happen well obviously the administ the the campaign Victory and administration of Donald Trump uh will be written about and analyzed as long as the American Republic endures uh and even after uh depending on how things turn out and in many ways the roots of this uh can be traced back to the 9s uh both to Ross perau who represented this populist uh there it was an anger but it was also that that makes it more emotional there is a genuine rational evidence-based critique to make of the duopoly of the Republican and and Democratic parties and perau made that case so did Pat Buchanan from a uh similar but also different uh perspective uh both understood how to use media uh Buchanan was a creature of cable news uh perau understood the power of Larry King uh hugely important moments uh unfolded on that on that show and they tapped into a significant feeling in the country that the two major parties were not commensurate to the challenges of governance and that's a historical fact it's an unfolding political fact um you know one of the things about third- party candidates is sometimes they they lose in the short term but win in the long term and in so far at without bringing without personally enlisting Buchanan and pero with Trump that third way uh is an interesting historical phenomenon because Trump took the Third Way way but used it not to Simply make a point but to take over a party yeah that's right and what in one of the things that you know I try to think about politics and ways of trying to figure out some what might call structural forces and that what's going on what was going on in the Republican party which I think gave rise to Trump was this anger that was reflected by people like Pat Buchanan but it was also true that the Republicans in 2008 and then again in 2012 12 nominated candidates who were moderates who were supposed to be able to win the election and in fact they lost the election McCain lost against Obama and then Romney lost against Obama in his re-election bid that led to real anger because often what happens is a act after a kind of a pragmatist moderate moderate loses like McCain the party activists gain their gain traction gain excitement gain money and they actually capture the nomination in the next round and they often go down to Big defeat that happened in 1960 after Nixon loses to Kennedy the activist gain hold and give rise to to goldwater's nomination Goldwater loses in a massive uh defeat you know doesn't even get 40% of the vote loses the Electoral College by massive amounts and that gave rise back to the pragmatist Nixon and so you have this going back and forward but in this case pragmatist won backto back the nomination and lost creating all kinds of anger the Trump m a way to tap into in a way that most people didn't understand um Jeb Bush for example was trying to run the classic kind of campaign that normally would have been quite successful but it was playing against a backdrop of of a lot of anger and we still see that anger in the in the country today and Trump continues to tap into that and nobody should underestimate the power of that and that's been a common theme in American politics there's not never been a time when everybody's been happy by any means I keep waiting for that to happen [Laughter] when is that going to happen um you know I think as people look forward to the next three months the couple of things to watch right you you you need to wa one needs to watch where do what we would now think of is most recently is Nicki Haley Republicans what do they do uh are there people who are Republicans or center right folks who are uncomfortable with Trump are they willing to cross the aisle and actually vote for a Democrat which as you know better than I do from polarized behavior is really hard to do uh that's one thing I do know from conversations with people who are never Trump Republicans that after the debate uh after President Biden's performance they could no longer vote for they said they could no longer vote for President Biden in that head-to-head now they claimed prospectively uh that they could vote for the vice president again whether that becomes you know whether that's true or not I don't know one of the things about politics as we know is it's rather like what Mark Twain said about the Evangelist who came to town in Tom sawer who was so good that even Huck fin was saved until Tuesday you know can you get past Tuesday uh in many ways for people uh who by and large are closer to a traditional Republican view than a traditional democratic view what Alters all of this of course is is this is the most significant election let me let's think this out really I don't want to say ever so check me on this where the composition and action of the Supreme Court is as top of mind for potential swing voters as any time I can think of um yeah the the the backlash against the war in court was hugely important but that tended to drive people out of the democratic party into the Republican Party thereby rendering them UNS swing voters this is a little different yeah I think it is and it's you know the courts certainly weighed in in lots of different ways and obviously the famous gorv Bush case but that was after the election yeah and so this is playing out and of course then the immunity decision that the Supreme Court handed giving presidents just more Authority is causing some you know lots of consternation in lots of different quarters just as for the institution itself regardless of who happens to be the to be the occupant and so yeah this is you know it'll be interesting to see because one of the things we know as political scientists is that partisanship drives choices and that one of the things that Harris has been able to do is bring home a lot of Democrats who had doubts about Biden I think at the end of the day they might have come home anyways but they came home a lot quicker a lot faster because they had a new reason new sense of excitement and that's the thing that you know can can Harris keep this excitement going and that excitement matters because if you can get the turnout up in the 2024 election that will allow her in fact to very likely win but if this enthusiasm Fades and turnout does not uh increase in and especially in those Battleground States especially in the urban areas that are likely in the Suburban surrounding counties that are likely to have a lot of potential haris support you know she could end up losing we just don't know and there's a lot of speculation about that and people we just don't know yet and even the polls that have come out we have to give a you know a couple of weeks before results settle down that we really know whether this is going to stick yeah Harris probably gets a bit of a bounce but how much and how long it lasts I mean it's there's lots of speculation but not a lot of uh information let me ask you one question for for our community polling assess the validity of this statement as we say polling in the last decade or so has become ever less predictive I think the answer is on average yes that's right that polls have have become more problematic because you basically the the core problem that a poll faces is that you have to take the people who answer the poll and use them to gener generalize to the entire population but the problem is the people who answer polls are different than people who don't and so one thing you have to guard about is that is is Harris's increase in support because people are more excited about Harris and more willing to do polls whereas they weren't as excited about Biden and therefore they were less willing to do polls suggesting that in fact her uh Trump was ahead more so than he actually might be um and and also just the response rate from polls you know 20 years ago you might have a response rate on teleph polls of about 30 35% it's now down to single digits that's a huge problem but we know a lot about polling we in fact have on the facult Josh Clinton who is absolute expert on all of these kinds of questions there are ways to wait them and you really do for all of you out there you know president Trump makes a comment about the good and bad polls which is a distinction is a fair point um most candidates whether it be Trump or Harris they pick the polls that favor them and that's the ones they talk about but there are some polls that are just more reliable the ones that work really hard at the right kinds of waiting schemes to make sure that they're right and also if you get some crazy result uh you need to treat it just as that as crazy um and so the polling industry you know in in 2016 people say polls were wrong that's not quite right because in 2016 if you woke up that morning that first Tuesday of November uh Hillary Clinton was on a up about two points nationally in all the polling she won by two points where the polling when aide was in individual states that you get less lower quality polls and often in the state polls and so that's one thing that the polling industry has tried to create is you're making sure you're doing good polling in Pennsylvania you're doing good polling in in uh Wisconsin in 2020 the polls were off quite a bit there's no debate about that but again it was a waiting scheme one of the things that Donald Trump has done is got a whole group of people to vote that hadn't been voting and that uh has messed up polls but you know what I would do with the polling is one of the things that I think is definitely true is that Harris is in a stronger position now than Biden was four weeks ago I think that's absolutely true through no debate about that is it strong enough that she's actually leading and can win that's where you have to hesitate hesitate a little bit is she activating younger voters is she activating African-American V the answer is yes again but is it going to be enough and that we really won't won't know until election day and very likely after election day because the individual states do the counting of the ballots and such weird ways that Arizona results won't be in for example for a while um and that's just the the nature of the Beast um let's just close and talk maybe for two or 3 minutes about our class we're teaching um and 1100 students largest class ever uh elective class at Vanderbuilt there probably were some required classes of Western Civ at one point in time that may have generated higher enrollments but actually there was no other bigger room so it would be tied I guess because Langford was still the biggest venue but truth of the matter is that this is an elective the students are choosing to take it which I think says a lot about Vanderbilt students it says a lot about the time because they realize like you know we were just contending this is an important election they want to hear about what this election means because they're going to be living for the with the consequences far longer than than you and I will be and so what you know what struck you about the class so far that uh that you might share with uh our viewers enormous interest as you say uh wonderful students um you know we're just what we're two or three in I think think uh so early days but you can tell from emails you can tell from the questions we get uh that there's a level of Engagement that is what I would call not bipartisan but Supra partisan there's an interest in this as a cultural political uh event and an intellectual curiosity as well as a Civic one to understand as much as they possibly can and fortunately uh Nicki hemmer and Josh Clinton can do that uh while while the two old guys in the Muppet balcony uh chatter occasionally yeah yeah I you know I've been this class started out in 1996 it's been offered every four years it was an idea of of a now retired faculty member Bruce Oppenheimer um and it's become kind of an event for the students which I think is a tribute to them it's great fun to teach because of the quality of these these students and the fact that they care about it and I think it's just a general statement about Vanderbilt um that just makes teaching here just great fun because these students are are here to learn they're here to engage they're not here to to make partisan statements I mean some people have said do you think there'll be protests in class and there might be protests about some of the things I say because I'm just not very good some days Wireless is having a having yeah Wireless is a big issue that's for sure well it turns out that taxing the devil out of the system because they're all online as you might imagine but it's a it's a real fun to teach these these students and and it's an event I mean with this kind of size it's it has a different feel than than other kinds of classes but it'll but we'll bring some uh great guests in and we'll continue to to give them substantive stuff to to think through because one of the things we commit to them and we expect them to commit to us is this class is not about partisanship it's not about voting for Trump or voting for Harris it's really about figuring out how elections in this country work and also how they don't work so I think with that um I'm going to close this first uh uh conversation of the choice there's going to be another one in about a month and then a couple after that um I'm John gear and I'm John meum I'm the one in the blue jacket as opposed to catty Shack Chic you got it John gear I I prefer to make a statement and uh since I don't have a lot to say I've got want to hear that statement thank you thank you very much