Alan Price: Good evening. I'm Alan Price, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, we welcome you to this evening's Forum, online. I'm so glad you could be with us this evening.
I'd like to acknowledge the generous support of our underwriters: lead sponsors Bank of America and the Lowell Institute; and our media sponsors, the Boston Globe and WBUR.
We look forward to a robust question-and-answer period this evening. You'll see full instructions on screen for submitting your questions via email, or comments on our YouTube page during the program.
We are so grateful to have this timely opportunity to consider the extraordinary issues presented by the coronavirus with respect to this fall's election with our distinguished guests this evening. I'm now delighted to introduce tonight's speakers.
I'm pleased to extend a warm welcome back to EJ Dionne, who is a Washington Post columnist, a government professor at Georgetown University, a senior fellow in government studies at the Brookings Institution, and a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio and MSNBC. The author of many books, and the editor of many more, his most recent book is, Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country.
I'm also delighted to introduce Janet Hook, a staff writer covering national politics for the Los Angeles Times. She returned to the Times' Washington bureau in 2018 after spending eight years covering politics and Congress for the Wall Street Journal. She had previously covered Congress and politics for the Times from 1995 to 2010. She has also served as a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow.
Welcome also to Ronald Brownstein, who is a senior editor at the Atlantic, as well as a senior political analyst for CNN. He has served as a columnist, correspondent and senior editor for the National Journal and a columnist and correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Among numerous honors and awards, he has twice been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, receiving that recognition for his coverage of both the 1996 and 2004 political campaigns.
I'm also pleased to introduce Karen Tumulty, our moderator for this evening's discussion. She is a columnist for the Washington Post, where, in her previous role as national political correspondent for the newspaper, she received the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting. She has also served as a national, political, White House and Congressional correspondent for Time magazine, and covered a wide variety of beats for the Los Angeles Times.
Please join me in welcoming our special guests.
Karen Tumulty: Thank you, Alan, and thank all of you for joining us tonight from wherever you are, we trust staying safe and staying healthy. We're really looking forward to this conversation about this election that is going to be unlike anything that we have ever seen before. And I think I'd like to start out our conversation tonight by asking all three of my colleagues here – you've all written a lot about polarization, but we have always seen in the past that when we have a national crisis, it sort of– it brings people together. You think of after 9/11, when all of a sudden Congress discovered it knew how to work together and American flags were springing up on everyone's lawns. But in this one, it seems like, if anything, crisis has driven us even further apart, even an act so basic as whether or not you put on a mask is seen as having political implications.
So EJ, can I start with you? I mean, does this say we are just broken beyond repair, or what?
EJ Dionne: I think in all other crises we can think of, we had a President who saw his job as, in part, to bring the country together. When 9/11 happened, the country was very divided; George W. Bush's election was contested, the entire fight over Florida left people very bitter. But in that period, after 9/11 happened, and for some months thereafter, Bush dedicated himself to bringing the country together. And I think one of the signal acts he performed in that period was to visit the Islamic Center in Washington, DC, to give a very strong speech saying, do not in any way discriminate or take this out on American Muslims. They are patriots, they are soldiers, and so on.
I think we, in this period, have a President whose political approach and, as I think he sees it, political survival depends upon polarization, depends in particular on the cultural warfare that's embodied in the mask-wearing or not.
I do think that it's possible to look at the polls and say, maybe we're not quite as divided as we think. For example, on this question of whether we should just open up quickly or not, a substantial majority of Americans, including – depending on the polls – a small majority or a significant minority of Republicans say we have to be more cautious about opening.
So beneath this division, I think there may be a bit more unity, but the nature of our politics now, the nature of Twitter and other forms of social media I think are highlighting these symbols, like mask-wearing or not, in a way that does feed into the narrative of division. And I think the President sees himself as having an interest in a divided rather than a united country.
Karen Tumulty: So Ron, is this a Washington phenomenon? Because we're also seeing approval ratings of governors are just going through the roof. A lot of them have approval ratings of 70% and higher. I mean, are people coming together on some other level?
Ronald Brownstein: I don't think so, really. I think the approval of the governors is the sense that they are managing a crisis, and usually – with the President this time as an exception – during crisis the approval ratings for leaders rise, as they have for leaders around the world. I think the basic story of this crisis is that unlike– maybe we idealize the extent to which earlier moments of national crisis brought us together, but there's no question I think this is highlighting, illuminating all of our differences. I think if you look at politics over the last 25 years, the single-biggest story is the overlapping geographic and demographic separation of the parties, with Democrats getting stronger in metro areas everywhere in the country, and among the constituencies who tend to live there – white collar professionals, young people, non-whites, more secular voters. And Republicans getting stronger in the non-urban, the non-metro geographies and the constituencies who live there – evangelical whites, older whites, blue collar whites, communities that are more tied in to the 20th century powerhouse industries of agriculture, energy and manufacturing, as opposed to the service economy and knowledge, information age economy in the metro areas. All of that was happening before Trump.
But as EJ said, I think in Trump you have the first President who has consciously sought to fan polarization as part of his political strategy. And if you ask me what the impact of this is going to be, politically, of, kind of, the outbreak, I would think it's going to further accentuate this divide.
You know, Karen, we talked about this before, but if you look at 2016, Hillary Clinton won 87 of the 100 largest counties in America; she won them by a combined 15 million votes. She got half of her votes just from those 100 counties. Those are the places by and large that have been hardest hit during this outbreak. If you look Detroit and Macomb and Oakland, that's about, I think, two-thirds of the total cases in Michigan; three-fifths of the cases in Pennsylvania and its suburbs. So it is possible that Trump, I think, will lose those bigger places by even more. And of course, that's where there's been the most political warfare over how quickly to reopen in many cases with Republican governors overruling Democratic mayors.
On the other hand, although it is spreading, and we will see the final result, the outbreak has not yet hit as hard in small town, rural, red America, although again it is spreading. So to me, it is possible we come out of this with what I call the trench between kind of diverse, secular, post-industrial, metro America and an older, more Christian, more 20th-century industry, non-metro America even deeper. And the question is, which side adds up a little more in November.
Karen Tumulty: Janet, are you seeing any bridges over Ron's trench?
Janet Hook: Not many. In fact, I thought the most remarkable sign of the polarization of America were the polls that showed that Democrats and Republicans didn't even agree on how serious the threat was, especially in the early stages of the outbreak. There was this clear demarcation between– Democrats were just much more worried about it, they were more worried about somebody in their family getting sick, they were more eager to see the businesses shut down. I saw one place even, there was a political scientist who analyzed Google searches for hand sanitizer – more Democrats than Republicans Googled for hand sanitizer. I'm telling you!
Ando you have the feeling when you don't even have public opinion consensus on the extent of the public health emergency, it's not surprising you don't have agreement on things going forward.
Now, a part of it may be the kind of geographic divide that Ron is talking about. Democrats tend to live in crowded places where there actually were more cases of coronavirus – California and New York kind of led the way. And there were signs in the polling that, as the infections would spread, that public opinion would change somewhat.
But there was a study in Washington State, which was the first state to really be hit hard, that found initially a really big partisan gap between Republicans and Democrats. And as the infection spread, the gap got smaller, but it did not disappear.
EJ Dionne: Karen, could I just say one quick thing on that? Which is, I– obviously, I agree with my colleagues about many aspects of the trench that Ron described, but I do think there is a possibly that this is scrambling allegiances just a little bit. One of the biggest pieces of news that I think all of us in what we have alluded to is Trump's growing weakness in the over-65 group; that Americans who are over 65, white Americans over 65, tend to be more culturally conservative, were a very important part of his vote in 2016. He has been losing substantial ground there. Why? because that is a group very worried about the virus. They heard a message coming out of Trump and the Republicans that was either openly, or at least subliminally, "Well, if some people have to die to restore the economy, so be it." And they were the people who were most likely to die.
And so, I think this scrambling of allegiances, at least among older voters, may be one sign that– not that all of the polarization will go away, but there may be some breaks in the polarization because of this crisis.
Karen Tumulty: So in this environment, how the heck are we going to have an election. First of all, we’ve got– there's this high anxiety among Democrats that Joe Biden's basically stuck in his basement and he can't get out and campaign. How are the candidates going to campaign? Is there any chance that these conventions are actually going to come off or actually going to happen?
Janet Hook: My big question about the conventions is, who would want to go? Tens of thousands of people in a big, crowded stadium like that? I think it's going to be very hard to pull off. The Democrats, of course, have postponed their convention; it was supposed to be in mid-July and now it's scheduled for mid-August because there's just no way it was going to happen in July. And they seem to be laying the groundwork for not having an in-person, full-on convention even in August.
Trump really is holding on to the idea that he's going to have tens of thousands of people in Charlotte, North Carolina, and that will be very hard to pull off.
Karen Tumulty: With no masks, I'm sure!
Janet Hook: Right, no masks.
Ronald Brownstein: That’s a considerable point. Because, if you're the mayor or Charlotte or the governor of North Carolina, you're looking at not only 50,000 people coming, but many, perhaps most of whom have an ideological opposition to mask-wearing and other forms of social distancing. So I think they face a very difficult choice in Charlotte, about whether to permit.
Trump clearly– I think where Trump is heading on this is that he wants to basically portray himself as the captain who steers through the stormy waters. And yeah, "it was rough at points, but now we are on the other shore. And who do you trust to go forward from here and rebuild the economy?" And that is one place where he has led in polling, on who do you trust to lead the economy out of this ditch, even in polling by Democrat Stan Greenburg that came out at the end of last week.
So I think Trump is going to do whatever he can. I mean, he wants schools open. He wants NFL games with 60,000 people in the stands. He said we shouldn't have an Alabama/LSU game with 15,000 people. He wants to be able to say in September, ‘We are back to normal.’ And I think the convention and the rallies and all will be part of that.
And the great risk, of course, is that the virus gets a vote about whether we are back to normal. And if he seems to be defying expertise in the way that he has been, that is obviously part of his strategy, part of the way he mobilizes his non-urban base, but it's also one of the reasons why the numbers have been so tough for them in these white collar suburbs where you have all these people living in nice houses totally on the basis of their expertise. Their mastery of concepts. And now you have a President who's basically saying, "I know more than the doctors; why not take this drug?" and so forth.
So I see why he's doing it, but it is not without risk of compounding the basic problem that's producing the trench or the divide that I talk about.
Janet Hook: And it's a huge gamble for him because, as you say, the virus has a vote. So he gets all these people together and then they have a second wave outbreak right before the election.
EJ Dionne: In Charlotte, in a swing state, in a Democratic part of a swing state. I mean, what's ironic, or something–
Karen Tumulty: In a swing state where there's a hot gubernatorial race and a hot Senate race.
EJ Dionne: Correct. Yeah, exactly. What's odd is, we may see played out the very division that we're talking about, that the Democrats will be cautious about it, will say "we don't want to cause infections so we're not going to have a convention, this is not the right time," and the Republicans say, "no, that's for sissies, not having a convention. We're going to have one. We're going to show that we can do this."
And I am not at all sure that that will play well with the voters who will decide this election. I was just talking to somebody today in Arizona. Maricopa County, which Ron is very interested in, it may be the swing county of this election, in Arizona. Arizona may be the deciding state in this election. The Democrat running for the Senate is now way ahead in that race in Maricopa County, which was once upon a time the heart of the Goldwater movement. And it's because of suburban moderate voters, who are just not really happy with the way that Trump has managed this crisis.
And so, I think that if he sends messages of "don't worry about this, it's over," I just think there are plenty of people in the country who are not liberal, not Democratic, but who say, "no, this isn't really over yet." And that's going to be a problem for him.
Ronald Brownstein: It goes to what EJ was saying before. And he's right, the one thing that has moved in 2020 that really wasn't evident very much in 2018 is some erosion for Trump with older voters, including older white voters who were an important constituency for him. He won about, I believe, 60% of older whites in 2016. And they've moved, I think both for the reason that EJ said, that they view a lot of the Republican rhetoric as making them expendable, but also because I think Trump's behavior during this, his volatility during this, his careening and reaching at straws seems to them, I think, more contrasted– they have more history to contrast it against, of how Presidents might behave.
Now, having said that, where this fits in to your point is that, you know, if Biden wins, he is going to win with his own pathway that is different from what Democrats probably expected about the way to beat Trump. You know, the dominant view of the Democratic Party – and I think I– for may analysts, including myself – has been that the way Democrats expand the map is by expanding the electorate, that you need someone who can go out and bring in more younger, non-white voters, and that's how you put Florida, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, places like that, in play.
It seems, if you're watching Joe Biden in his basement, and even once he gets out of his basement, he does not seem to be in position to really achieve that goal. It's kind of hard to believe that 77-year-old Joe Biden, with all his limitations as a messenger, is going to be the one to pick the lock and figure out how to massively increase turnout among Latinos in Arizona and Texas and young African Americans in Georgia. But he may be able to expand the map in a totally different way, just by doing what EJ said – running four or five points better among older whites is another way to win, or to more seriously contest Arizona and Florida, as well as Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, all of which states with older populations.
So it may be that kind of the medium and the moment and the messenger all point him toward a very different strategy than Democrats will probably be employing for most of this decade, and what they probably expect to be deploying in 2020 and less having this big, engaging, compelling national campaign, and more about just moving a few points of older whites, including blue collar older white who normally vote Republican but find Trump a little too volatile for their taste.
Karen Tumulty: So is there anything that Joe Biden ought to be doing from his basement that he is not doing at this point? And obviously, he has a gigantic decision ahead of him, which is a running mate. He said it will be a woman. Traditionally, the vice presidential pick doesn't win or lose elections, but there's beyond the political implications of this, there's a substantive implication of this pick, because he would be the oldest President in history. He has not discouraged talk that he would be a one-term President. So win or lose, whoever he picks as running mate, is going to be positioned potentially to be the first woman President of the United States. And also the leader of the next generation of the Democratic Party.
Janet Hook: Yeah, you know, I– Every presidential nominee has to make their decision about who their running mate is based on a choice between, do I want somebody who can help me get elected, or do I want somebody who is my partner in governing? And the beauty of Joe Biden as a choice for Obama is, he kind of scratched both itches. He was– he served really important political needs for him, which was the young, inexperienced black guy needed a white partner who knew the world in Washington. So Joe Biden was the rare breed that provided both of those things.
Now, as the man at the top of the ticket, Joe Biden has really powerful needs on both sides. He really needs somebody to help him to win. He needs somebody to generate the excitement and bring along the constituencies, the young people, the Latinos that he's not getting naturally. But his governing demand is really strong and different from Obama's. He doesn't need somebody with a lot of experience to help him; he needs somebody with a lot of experience to potentially replace him.
And so, it's kind of like, you look at the lineup of women that he's considering, and there– they all have strengths and weaknesses on both sides, but there is no Joe Biden for Joe Biden. There's no one woman who seems to scratch both itches. Like, you could say that Elizabeth Warren looks like the person best equipped to just step up and be ready to run the government on day one; but she's 70 years old. You can say that Stacey Abrams brings energy and excitement, both from the progressive wing and among African Americans, but she ain't got much experience; she doesn't fill in the ready-on-day-one qualification.
So I've got to say, I am totally fascinated by this decision that he faces. Like, I can't wait to see what he decides because it's a real juggling act. But it'll be weeks before we find out.
EJ Dionne: I completely agree with Janet, that there is no obvious choice here. I want to say a word about how wonderful that basement has been for Joe Biden. I think the basement is an underrated place in this period of the campaign. The old line, I think it was Napoleon – lord knows who first said it, maybe Yogi Berra – but when your opponent is destroying himself, you shouldn't get in the way. And I think in this period, Biden has actually been, generally speaking, well served by doing what he's been doing. He can't do this forever. He's got to figure out a way to break out.
But I think that he has presented calm and empathy and compassion, all those kinds of virtues that contrast well with Trump. He has actually also done a lot of those online ads that have been really quite powerful as a contrast with Trump. And they have mainly– a lot of them have focused on Trump's denial of the crisis in the first place, many of the crazy things Trump said, with a few positive contrasts of Joe Biden being older, experienced, calm, and empathetic.
And so, I think if you look at the polling, he is way better off since he went into that basement since this crisis started. Now, I'm ascribing no magical qualities to the basement, just saying this has been a good period for Joe Biden.
Karen Tumulty: Well, he was on his porch the other day.
EJ Dionne: It's a better visual.
Ronald Brownstein: I'd be interested in your thoughts, Karen, on the VEEP, too, but I'll give you my quick ones. I don’t have any– like everybody else, I don't have any insight exactly what their considerations are and how they're evaluating. Having covered Joe Biden since the 1980s, I bet that he personally wants to pick Amy Klobuchar, and that he might be talked out of that because it would be seen as too bland by others in his orbit.
I think that politically, the strongest choices for him are either Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren. I think Stacey Abrams in this environment, it's just very hard to imagine Joe Biden picking someone, for all of her skills, with her limited experience and feeling that she could step in and lead the country through a moment that looks a lot rockier and more tumultuous, 2021, than he might have been expecting six months ago.
Harris, I mean, has obvious benefits. I thought she was much better at prosecuting the case against Trump as a candidate than making the case for herself as former prosecutor. And I think she is a dynamic campaigner. Whether it solves his problems on the left or among younger voters is open to question because obviously there were issues she faced from those corners about her record as a prosecutor.
Elizabeth Warren, to me, is the most intriguing one because initially I thought it was kind of a– you know, an idea without a lot of merit. If Biden's basic argument is that "I'm going to be a reassuring figure who helps win back some of those center right white voters who might think Trump is just a little too much but aren't ready to fully embrace the Democratic agenda," well, maybe she frightens some of them away. On the other hand, I do think it would electrify the party in a way that nobody else would. I mean, it would be seen – strangely, as a 70-year-old white woman – it would be seen as a bold stroke, I think, as a way of reaching across the party and putting in place someone who could be, kind of, portrayed as the Frances Perkins to his FDR in kind of leading a vision of how you use this moment. Don't let a crisis go to waste, Rahm Emanuel said, and many Democrats felt that they did. Except for the ACA. And that would be, I think, the boldest stroke that he could make, even though in one sense it's a 70-year-old white woman, in other ways I think it could be seen as the boldest thing he could do.
EJ Dionne: Karen, can I throw it at you because the only point I would add – I think all this analysis has been good – the only point I would add is, I think it is really, really important to Joe Biden to feel very comfortable with this person as vice president. Because being vice president is, in some ways, the most important part of his life. He knows the kind of person he wants. That seems to me oddly might lead either to Klobuchar or to Warren with whom he has developed what seems to be a quite remarkable relationship since the campaign ended. But I'm curious what you think, Karen.
Karen Tumulty: Yeah, I think the sense you get is that if it were just up to Joe Biden's heart, it would be Amy Klobuchar. I think that the candidates' experience is going to matter so much more than probably it ever has. And it does seem like Kamala Harris checks a lot of boxes. She's got executive experience, she's got statewide experience, she's got national campaign experience and she's been in the Senate. And also, there are a number of women governors out there who I think are all going to get a very serious look as well.
I just think– I'm with Janet. This is the most fascinating decision to watch.
But I think before we get to some questions that we're getting from the audience, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about just exactly, again, how is this election going to take place? We've seen some states are moving to embrace vote-by-mail, but then you have places like Texas where they are saying if you have a compromised immune system, that does not count as a disability for absentee voting. How are people– How can you run a voter registration effort in this kind of environment?
Ronald Brownstein: So, I've written about both ends of that, so let me maybe start. On the vote-by-mail, so about a quarter of the votes in 2016 were cast by mail in the country. The estimates are that'll be about one in two or maybe more in 2020. The key thing to understand about the vote-by-mail is that in all of the states that are likely to decide the President, no-fault vote-by-mail is already available. You can vote by mail for any reason in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, in Florida, North Carolina and Arizona, which are the big six that are most likely to pick the winner. And it's also true in some of the second tier places like Ohio and Iowa.
The problem is, is that even within those states, there is a huge difference in the extent to which this option has been used in the past, and thus a huge difference in the infrastructure that's available to support it. I mean in Arizona, three-quarters of the ballots are cast by mail, and I think in Florida's it about a third, Michigan about a quarter. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and North Carolina are more in the 5% range.
So if you're talking about 40 or 45% of the people voting by mail, that is just a huge change. And the question of whether they are up to doing that is very much up in the air. But I do think that, despite all, kind of, the ideological skirmishing that's happening, in the states that are most likely to pick the winner, the legal structure is there to allow for a vast increase in vote-by-mail. The question is, which party is better organized to achieve that? And, you know, Democrats face the issue that African American voters often have been more comfortable with early voting than voting by mail. And also, whether the states themselves have the resources and the logistics and the staff to manage a vote of that size and to count it in any kind of reasonable timeframe after the election.
Janet Hook: So, I think this is really a fascinating thing to see. I mean, there have been people, Democrats mostly, that have been trying to expand vote-by-mail for years. Years. And this is going to be a huge boost just because of the circumstances to something that's been pretty slow to come in a lot of places. And it also is – the expansion and execution of vote-by-mail – has become itself a campaign issue because the Republicans have been so resistant to it, and Trump has been launching this campaign against allowing vote-by-mail, making his fraudulent charges about there being all this voter fraud. And it's ironic that it has gotten to be such a contentious issue for Trump. And Republicans who are all around the country executing these lawsuits to restrict access, that it actually isn't obvious that expanding vote-by-mail is intrinsically better for Democrats. I mean, you have the feeling, instinctively you would say it's the Democratic constituencies that have a harder time getting to the polls, but it's just not there in the research evidence.
EJ Dionne: But that’s the point I wanted to make is that there is something really strange about this debate because the Republican vote tends to be older and vote-by-mail is particularly good for older voters. The reason why I think we may end up getting the money needed to do this is because Republicans are going to look at "who might vote for us in the end," and realize they may have an interest in vote-by-mail. A lot of Republican secretaries of state who already know that they're going to have to manage the change Ron talked about, many more votes coming in by mail, they want the federal resources because a lot of places need to ramp up their capacity to get this done.
And so, I wonder if this debate will look the same in about a month-and-a-half when Republicans look at their own interests, Republican secretaries of state say, "We need this money," and everybody realizes, like it or not, there are going to be a lot of ballots in the mail in October/November.
I worry about counting, by the way, because there could be great uncertainty, and at a time of polarization, if the outcome– look how long it takes in California, which is very liberal.
Ronald Brownstein: Can we go back to EJ's point from earlier? Because I also think Maricopa County may be the single county most likely to pick the winner in the country. It's Republican-leaning. It's Phoenix's environs. It was the largest county in the US that Trump won in 2016. But in 2018, it moved to Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, in the Senate race.
If I remember correctly, when we went to bed on election night – correct me here, Janet, EJ, Karen – Martha McSally was winning in Maricopa County. And as they counted the ballots – because three-quarters of the ballots in Arizona are cast by mail and usually Republicans do better on mail balloting – but as they counted the ballots in Maricopa County over the next week or ten days, Martha McSally ended up losing Maricopa and the state, each by 60,000 votes.
So we have an election in which, say, Joe Biden has won Michigan and Pennsylvania, but not Wisconsin and Florida, and we are left with Arizona picking the winner. And we go to bed on election night with Donald Trump even, roughly, in the state, and then counting in Maricopa, as they did in 2018. What is that going to look like? What is that week going to look like on Fox or on [simultaneous conversation] It's quite a scenario to think about.
Karen Tumulty: Well, I mean, we can all go back and relive the Iowa caucuses, I guess.
Ronald Brownstein: Or Tallahassee.
Janet Hook: The thing about the Iowa caucuses though, was that was just a simple – a simple – breakdown of technology in reporting results, not a challenge in actually counting the votes. I mean, this could be– election night could go on for a very long time. And it will not be pretty.
Karen Tumulty: Well, and so, okay– the Republicans like to talk about the potential for voter fraud in vote-by-mail, but the other side of that coin that the Democrats talk about is voter suppression. To what degree – and we've had several questions come in from our audience tonight – to what degree is the virus, sort of, likely to become in fact a tool of voter suppression as well?
Ronald Brownstein: Well, someone said to me today, or I was talking to someone today who said there were 900,000 poll workers in the US, or 950 in 2016, and that it's hard to imagine that we would be able to get more than half of that in 2020. I mean, I don't think it's going to be quite at the level of the Wisconsin primary, but there are going to be fewer in-person polling places. Right? And so, that is going to be an issue, there's no question about it.
In polling, voter enthusiasm about voting in 2020 was through the roof. Many people were expecting the highest turnout. Some serious people were expecting 15 to 20 million more people to vote than in 2016, possibly the highest turnout of eligible voters since 1908. Those numbers are now down. They're back down to closer to normal. So do they stay there? What does the fall look like?
I would suspect that in-person voting, on election day, is going to be a significantly smaller share of the total pie than it has been for any of our lifetime. And the question is, to what extent does vote-by-mail and early voting where you can kind of spread it out allow for the turnout that people were expecting? Again, 15 to 20 million more was the ballpark that many people were talking about, which would have been a huge change. Right now, it's not clear that we're on track for that anymore.
EJ Dionne: And I think it's scary because historically we have relied on older people, often retirees, to work the polls. And those folks are not going to want to work the polls for a very good reason. I've been thinking you need Americorps or some organi– and other organizations to actually recruit young poll workers. [simultaneous conversation]
Janet Hook: And in Wisconsin, when they had that spring election, they had to call out the National Guard to man their polls. They were, they– You may remember, this was in early April when the virus was still kind of so unknowable and scary. In that case, it was a classic– I mean, this is why people think that Republicans' opposition to vote-by-mail is kind of a tool of voter suppression. But the results in Wisconsin showed– they fought it, they forced the election to go forward even in the middle of the coronavirus, and they ended up having their clock cleaned.
EJ Dionne: Because Democrats ran a great mail campaign.
Janet Hook: They did, exactly.
EJ Dionne: By the way, on voter suppression, I am very worried about these stories over the last several days of Republicans recruiting 50,000 people to prevent voter fraud. There was a consent decree where the party was seen as trying to suppress the African American vote. Imagine fewer polling places. Inner cities tend to be underserved by polling places. The lines are already longer. Imagine people challenging a lot of voters and slowing the lines down even more. That's one of the other things I worry about on election day and after that could prove to be very divisive in the country.
Karen Tumulty: And then, can we just talk about one scenario because it raised some eyebrows last week when Jared Kushner seemed to briefly entertain the possibility that election day may not take place on election day. I mean, is this just one of those things that's bouncing around or is this a real concern?
Janet Hook: It's a real concern, but it can't happen. This is really– it's just classic Trump, kind of putting stuff out there that's just not true, can't happen, violates the Constitution. We will vote on election day. We don't know exactly how, but we will vote on election day.
Karen Tumulty: Well, and then, before we get to– We've also had some questions about the media and how we do our jobs in this environment, trying to cover this election. The national media did not exactly cover itself in glory in 2016 for seeing the victory of Donald Trump. How are journalists going to cover this election from their own basements?
EJ Dionne: Your column that went up today, Karen, was an excellent column on this very problem. And Margaret Sullivan's piece the other day in our newspaper, in the Post, was very good. There is a problem that– I've been thinking of that now clichéd line, "where's the signal and where's the noise." In the Trump campaign, the noise is the signal. In that, the idea is that he's going to throw out all kinds of stuff. There is no Obamagate, and yet we had five days of news coverage about Obamagate. And I am talking– I used that word, Obamagate, just now, so I am putting it in circulation, even though there is no such thing.
And I think that that's going to the challenge to the media. And, what is the ratio between actual coverage of what Trump has done as President versus coverage of all of these– all of the noise that he will put out there. And I'm not sure, Margaret Sullivan argued in her piece in our paper, that media have not seemed to learn enough from what happened in 2016. And I very much worry about how this campaign is going to be covered.
I'm curious what my colleagues think.
Ronald Brownstein: The system is not built for– there's nothing in the American system that has been built for a President who is this dismissive of the norms of democracy. I mean, the media has not historically had to imagine how to deal with a President who lies and spreads misinformation as relentlessly as Trump does. Congress, I think, has been equally flummoxed by how to deal with someone who completely rejects the legislative authority to conduct oversight. And in the case of Congress, with the, kind of, acquiescence, if not abetting, of the Republicans in Congress.
Lindsey Graham said today he's going to go out and subpoena on Obamagate. Mitch McConnell gave a speech on the floor the Senate – "we've got to investigate the investigators." The scandal in 2016 were not the questions of contact between the Trump campaign and Russia; it was the efforts by the law enforcement arms and the intelligence arms of the Obama administration to investigate those contacts.
So it's not just the media spreading that story. It is the institution of the Senate and the Senate Judiciary Committee trying to amplify and create that.
Now, the hard part, for me, is to kind of think about, well, how much does any of this matter in terms of moving either the small slice of the electorate that is available to be moved? Or changing the turnout pattern which is probably the single most likely way for Trump to win, is by bringing out more of his voters who didn't vote in 2016.
There was a poll the other day, a Suffolk/USA Today poll, and they ran the presidential horserace by the source of television news that you trust the most. Trump was winning 93-5 among people who said they trusted Fox the most; and he was winning narrowly when people said they didn't trust any other source. Among every other television network, including the broadcast networks, he was at 20% or below, right?
So, if you're talking about this vote is so concentrated in one place that is living, as I like to say, in the Stephen King novel, Under the Dome, where none of this ever penetrates, you know, I don't know how much it matters how much we talk about Obamagate. I think Trump's audience is going to come away from this election feeling that Joe Biden is a bad guy who's done all sorts of bad things and there's almost no way to prevent that from happening. Whether it's justified or not, that is going to be their impression. And the question is going to be whether they think the merits of Trump are lesser or greater than that.
Janet Hook: So, I think the media faces two kinds of challenges here. One is the challenge that's very much like the problem of covering Trump as President, which is, how do you cover a politician who lies so much? But also, my own experience now of a couple of months of covering a presidential campaign, not from my basement, but from my house, is, you know, it's really hard to figure out what the country feels like from watching TV, reading polls, phone interviews. Now, actually, Ron can figure everything out from reading polls; he's a brilliant poll reader.
But I just– this whole experience has really, for me as a political reporter, so reinforced how much you get from actually being out with a campaign, seeing a candidate interacting with voters, talking to randomly chosen people at rallies, just having more, kind of, day-to-day interaction with candidates and voters.
By the time I took my last plane flight around the time of Super Tuesday, I was pretty sick of talking to voters because there had been so many events. It was really a very intense period. But then it was just done. And this just isn't the best way to, kind of, understand what's going on in the country. And, we learned that even being out amongst the voters in 2016 sometimes you get things wrong, too. But this is really a different way of trying to figure out where this race is headed. And I don't feel very confident of our ability to read it.
EJ Dionne: I just have to say because of Janet's comments on voters, I'm with her. I love talking to voters, but since this is the Kennedy Library in Massachusetts, I have to recall a great Barney Frank line. He was at a very obstreperous town meeting and the voters were yelling at him. And he finally – only Barney Frank would do this with his own voters – he looked at the crowd and said, "Look, we politicians are no great shakes, but you voters are no day at the beach either." [laughter] Only Barney could get away with that.
Karen Tumulty: I think we ought to remind ourselves and our audience tonight, too, that the presidential race is not the only thing on the ballot this fall. And I think that two months ago, I would have said there was virtually no chance that the Democrats could take back the Senate. It feels like that calculation may be shifting. Does that– do you guys get that sense as well?
EJ Dionne: I would shift my money to the Democrats now, narrowly. I mean, Biden's got to stay strong, but it is really striking. For the very reason Jane had said that we can't get around, I spent a bunch of time on the phone with some of these candidates since I couldn't go and meet them, and it's really striking that if you look at– I spoke to Sara Gideon up in Maine who's running a strong race against Susan Collins. The Democrats have a good candidate down in North Carolina, Cal Cunningham who's a very interesting military veteran. Governor Bullock in Montana has made a race out of something that wouldn't have been a race for Democrats; he can win that. Hickenlooper is a strong candidate in Colorado. Kelly down in Arizona. Those four, even if Doug Jones loses, there's a majority.
Now, there's no sure thing yet. If Trump strengthens substantially, then it's another story. But I'm not sure Trump will strength substantially. So yes, I think, as I say, I think it's tilted the other way. I'm curious, Janet is a Congressional maven above all, what's your read?
Janet Hook: I feel the same way. The biggest thing that I noticed that's different between now and six months ago isn't just what I think; it's what Republicans think.
EJ Dionne: Exactly.
Janet Hook: The Republicans are really nervous now. And, it’s kind of like– it all does come down to four states. They were on the frontline six months ago and they're still on the front line. It's Maine with Susan Collins, Arizona with Martha McSally, Colorado with Cory Gardner, and North Carolina's Tom Tillis. Same four states, all tossups; they were tossups six months ago. But they are so much closer now.
And the other thing that has come out is in the first quarter of this year, the Democratic challengers in all of these frontline races just totally cleaned their clocks in fundraising. I mean, the Democrats really showed a lot of enthusiasm, and also just strength in small donor, online fundraising, which in a coronavirus situation, you don't want to be the kind of fundraiser that a lot of these Republicans are, which is dependent on in-person, big money, big dollar fundraisers.
EJ Dionne: And if one candidate wins because of the virus, I think it would be Bullock. What's really striking in Montana is, he's gotten very high marks from the voters. He's now actually ahead in at least one poll up there and it's because he has dominated the media. He hasn't campaigned at all, he's just dominated the media on the virus and the voters seem to like what he's doing, like they do most governors.
Karen Tumulty: One thing that I think– we would be remiss, a number of people in our audience are reminding us that there is still such a thing as issues out there. So this slowdown in economic activity does seem to have had at least a short-term, potentially temporary impact on climate change. But what about that as an issue? I mean, it seemed like it was going to loom over so much in this election. Biden has now appointed a task force to come up with potentially more far-reaching ideas on the subject. But are we even going to be talking about things like climate change? It seemed like it was going to be an issue that was just looming over everything in this election.
Ronald Brownstein: So, let me button up the last point real quick and then talk about climate because I think it is important to what we were discussing earlier. Button up the last point: 2016, first time in American history, every Senate race went the same way as the presidential race in that state. The long-term trend is, it's getting harder for either party to win Senate races in effect behind enemy lines in the states that vote the other way for President. And the balance may tip on whether anyone is able to do that in 2020 – whether Susan Collins can survive a narrow Trump loss in Maine, whether Cal Cunningham can survive a narrow Biden loss in North Carolina. Bullock would be very ahistoric; he'd probably have to survive a nine- or ten-point Biden defeat in Montana. We just don't have a lot of recent examples in the presidential year.
So that growing correlation, I think, is key. And it's a challenge for Democrats because Republicans tend to win slightly– Trump won 30 states; Clinton won 20 states. And that's kind of the long term.
The climate change is interesting because Biden probably was bolder on climate than he has been on most other domestic issues. And it may offer him his best change, from a policy point of view, to reach out to those young voters who have displayed markedly less enthusiasm for him than, say, for Obama or maybe even for Clinton, depending on the poll.
You know, he did have– he didn't go all the way to the Green New Deal and banning the sale of the internal combustion engine after 2030, as Bernie Sanders had, or banning fracking, but he did have a lot of money and a lot of specifics on moving toward a carbon-free economy. And I think that is likely to be one of the areas where he goes further in a Sanders-esque direction between now and the convention as a way of trying to– you know, using issues where he can to connect better with younger generations who are not that responsive yet to his campaign.
EJ Dionne: I think the pandemic shows that nature can come back to bite you. And I think there is a way in which people who are worried about the climate– and that's an increasing number of Americans; it's a major of Independents and Democrats; it's a very partisan split, like on so many other things. There is a case that while we weren't really thinking much about what we need to do to prepare for a pandemic, we probably ought to think a lot more than we do about the threat of climate.
But I think this crisis also underscored two issues that were already alive. Obviously, healthcare. Millions and millions of people have lost healthcare by losing their jobs. I think that just becomes an even stronger issue than it was in 2018 when it was one of the decisive issues for Democrats. And income inequality is a live question in a way. It's always been a live question for progressives, but when you see how unequal the suffering is economically, how unequal the suffering is in terms of healthcare– Patty Murray, the Senator from Washington State, was saying that we are talking about essential workers. They used to be the invisible workers and they're not invisible anymore.
So I think there's something brewing here that's going to change the fabric of the way we discuss politics.
Janet Hook: No, and I think you can already– you can already see it in the way Joe Biden is talking about policy, is that before the coronavirus crisis, he was the candidate of incremental, let's restore the Obama era kind of policies and now he's really coming out swinging. To meet the moment, you can't just say "we're going to go back to the Obama era." And he has been teeing up some more ambitious rhetoric and is promising more ambitious policies. And I totally agree with Ron, that he has a lot of room to move in advancing a more aggressive climate change agenda. And it would be politically wise because I think it is still a very strong, live issue for young people, and that's where he really needs an enthusiasm boost.
Ronald Brownstein: Janet, does the change in rhetoric point him towards Elizabeth Warren
Janet Hook: Well, it sounds like if you want an FDR kind of administration, you'd better get your Frances Perkins in there.
Ronald Brownstein: That's kind of the thing, yeah.
Karen Tumulty: Well, I think the other thing the virus has done is reminded us that we can build walls and we can build trade barriers and we can do all these things, but we cannot isolate ourselves from the world. And I think foreign policy is perhaps going to matter to people in a way. Really understanding the need to rebuild some of these international working relationships that seem to have been fractured in the last few years.
Ronald Brownstein: It fits right in with, you know– politically it's part of the trends that we were talking about earlier that Trump has accelerated. If you think about metro economies that are integrated into the world, service economies, finance, the digital economy, as opposed to ag economies, energy, manufacturing that at least in the latter two cases often can see the world as a competitor, I think that the general posture of Democrats trying to work more closely with allies around the world I would say also moving more in a free trade direction would actually reflect their constituency. I don't think they can get there.
But the fact is, is that Trump's kind of insular vision of America alone, America first does kind of cut the same way as many of these cultural issues. It's strengthening him in these kind of non-metro, older, blue collar, evangelical, white communities and raising yet another hurdle. I'm not a believer in single issues, but I think what happens is that voters kind of look at the whole package and say, "do I really belong in this coalition?" And I think his posture toward the rest of the world is just one of those reasons, it's just another one along with ten others of why many of those center right, white collar professionals who voted Republican on economic issues now feel more uncomfortable with his definition of the party.
EJ Dionne: I think that actually the crisis cuts both ways. I think what you said, Karen, is certainly true, that you can't keep a virus out with no matter how high the wall is and that there is a case for international cooperation. But this is leading, I think, to a much less economically integrated world. People are having real second thoughts about these long supply chains in other countries. We've seen the difficulty of manufacturing things we have needed for this crisis here. And so, there is more emphasis on, perhaps we need to do more here. And I think this will in a way strengthen internationalists and nationalists at the same time. I think it pushes in both directions.
Karen Tumulty: Well, I think we are just about out of time here. And so, I want to thank, first of all, you three for joining us tonight, but even more so, everyone in our virtual audience. Thank you so much for spending some of your time with us as well. And as we are looking forward to, as I said at the outset, an election unlike any that we have ever seen before. We'll look forward to staying in touch.
Thank you so much.
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