PAST EVENTS
Should the People Pick Our President?
Author and member of The New York Times editorial board, Jesse Wegman and famed commentator from The New Yorker Rick Hertzberg joined us to discuss the popular vote versus the Electoral College in presidential elections. In two of the last six presidential elections, the candidate with fewer national votes won the presidency. If we stay the course is a crisis of legitimacy inevitable? What are the viable alternatives?
NYT editorial board member Jesse Wegman joined The Common Good for a conversation as we discussed his book and possible reforms of the presidential vote and the Electoral College. The way we vote for the only official whose job it is to represent all Americans is neither fair nor just. Major reform is needed―now. Isn't it time to let the people pick the president?
Twice in the last five elections, the Electoral College has overridden the popular vote, calling the integrity of the entire system into question―and creating a false picture of a country divided into bright red and blue blocks when in fact we are purple from coast to coast. Even when the popular-vote winner becomes president, tens of millions of Americans―Republicans and Democrats alike―find that their votes didn't matter. And, with statewide winner-take-all rules, only a handful of battleground states ultimately decide who will become president. Jesse Wegman draws upon the history of the founding era, as well as information gleaned from campaign managers, field directors, and other officials from twenty-first-century Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns, to make a powerful case for abolishing the antiquated and antidemocratic Electoral College.
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Jesse Wegman serves on the editorial board for The New York Times where he has written about the Supreme Court and legal affairs since 2013. He was previously a senior editor at The Daily Beast and Newsweek, a legal news editor at Reuters, and the managing editor of The New York Observer.
His recent book has been heavily praised with Publishers Weekly saying "Wegman combines in-depth historical analysis and insight into contemporary politics to present a cogent argument that the Electoral College violates America’s ‘core democratic principles’ and should be done away with…" The New York Times wrote, "People have been arguing against the Electoral College from the beginning. But no one… has laid out the case as comprehensively and as readably as Jesse Wegman does.”
Rick Hertzberg is an award-winning journalist, best known as the principal political commentator for The New Yorker magazine. He is credited with helping to redesign and revitalize the magazine. He is an accomplished writer and believes that America’s system of winner-take-all elections, federalism, and separation of powers is out of date and damaging to political responsibility and democratic accountability.
He previously served as the editor of The New Republic where under his editorship magazine twice won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the magazine world’s highest honor. He went on to serve as the chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter where he wrote speeches that at one point increased the presidents approval rating by 11 points. Forbes credited Hertzberg as " one of the "25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media."
The White Working-Class Political Revolution
Author David Paul Kuhn and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb examined the drift of the white working-class voter from the Democratic party to the Republican party and the enormous impact it has had on U.S. politics. Together, they’ll help explain what drove these voters, and how that schism continues to exacerbate class conflict and political polarization today. In light of the most recent election, this will surely be a timely and essential conversation. The conversation was moderated by the brilliant journalist Clyde Haberman.
There’s no getting around it; this week has been a deeply troubling, emotionally draining one for most Americans. Beginning with an audio recording of President Trump pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to find votes that don’t exist, to an armed insurrection that overtook the Capitol and attempted to derail the peaceful transfer of presidential power, and ending with a record breaking number of daily coronavirus deaths.
Our inimitable moderator, Clyde Haberman, began our conversation by appropriately asking our guests, author David Paul Kuhn and former Virginia Senator, Jim Webb, what they made of it all. The former Senator astutely observed the nature of mobs and how they differ from the actions of individuals. Kuhn correctly reminded us not to mistake a few thousands extremists with the 74 million people who voted for Trump. We have, afterall, a two party system, but we are not a two party country. Many voters are anti-liberal, and not necessarily conservative. It’s a mixed bag of voters - some support a path for citizenship and some support a wall for example.
LBJ was the last president to win the white vote, so what happened?
Kuhn emphasizes the context and chaos of the time as a contributing factor to white working-class voters leaving Democrats for Republicans. Nixon appealed to them, while Democrats focused on making inroads with African Americans, LGBT, and more recent immigrant communities. Today, the Democratic coalition includes many wealthy, college educated whites as well.
According to Kuhn, entities like The Lincoln Project were not as successful at bringing Republican voters over to Biden as they could have been because they emphasized the wrong things. Rather than highlighting how Trump, in many ways, governed like a traditional, business friendly conservative, they focused on just what a lousy president he is. Historians may very well come to that same conclusion, but that just didn’t resonate with the white working class. Ultimately, People ultimately go to their sides when forced to choose their corners - Kuhn uses feminists supporting Clinton post-affair as an example of this.
Both commended Biden for bringing down the national temperature, striking the right tone and appealing to blue collar white voters, even if it was late.
There is a sad phenomenon taking place in America's white working class. Decreasing life expectancy, increasing divorce rates, stagnant incomes, rising alcohol and drug abuse, or as Nobel Prize Winning economist Angus Deaton has called it, Deaths of Despair.
How do Democrats win back these disillusioned voters?
Kuhn and Webb argue that Democrats need to lessen the cultural weight and emphasize common cause and needs - infrastructure, social safety nets, early education and broadband. The needs of the white working class don’t look that different from those of black and brown working class communities.
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David Kuhn is a political analyst and writer who has written several books that have been heavily praised, including his most recent one that was named on The New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2020." Kuhn has served as the chief political writer for CBS News online, a senior political writer for Politico as well as chief political correspondent at RealClearPolitics. He has also written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, National Review, New Republic, among other publications, and regularly appears on networks ranging from BBC to Fox News.
His book is credited by famed strategist James Carville as “perhaps the best book ever on how Democrats lost the white working class” and in the WSJ, Senator Webb stated that Kuhn was an “unacknowledged prophet” for the “consistency” of his longtime “warnings about the reasons white working people were moving away from the Democrats [which] were largely dismissed by the news media and party elites.”
Jim Webb is the former Democratic Senator from Virginia He wrote, introduced, and guided to passage the Post-9.11 GI Bill, the most significant veterans legislation since World War II, and co-authored legislation which exposed 60 billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan wartime-support contracts. A long-time advocate of fixing America’s broken criminal justice system, Mr. Webb was spotlighted in The Atlantic as one of the world’s “Brave Thinkers” for tackling prison reform and possessing “two things vanishingly rare in Congress: a conscience and a spine.” He went on to give a response to the State of the Union which has been regarded as one of the stronger State of the Union responses in recent memory.
He previously served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan and is the recipient of the Purple Heart. Webb is also an Emmy Award winning journalist, a filmmaker, and the author of ten books. Since retiring, Webb is continued to be a prolific writer and has written for many national journals including USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
Clyde Haberman has served as a journalist with The New York Times since 1977. His assignments included staff editor of The Week in Review; Metro reporter; City Hall bureau chief; and foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Rome, and bureau chief in Jerusalem. He is known and received tremendous praise for his coverage of the Attica prison rebellion, the fall of Ferdinand Marcos, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians, the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the rise of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East.
He was part of a Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, awarded for coverage of the prostitution scandal that led to Eliot Spitzer's resignation as New York governor. He continues to be a NYT columnist and writes the Retro Report essays for The New York Times.
The Election That Could Break America
After Election Day, what should we expect? The list of possibilities is keeping experts on both sides of the aisle getting ready to take action. The Common Good hosts, “The Election That Could Break America” with Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Bart Gellman, and moderated by Tom Rogers. You will not want to miss Gellman dive into his most recent much-talked-about article in The Atlantic and his insights into the unprecedented scenarios that we may encounter post-election.
After Election Day, what should we expect? The list of possibilities is keeping experts on both sides of the aisle getting ready to take action. The Common Good hosts, “The Election That Could Break America” with Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Bart Gellman, and moderated by Tom Rogers. You will not want to miss Gellman dive into his most recent much-talked-about article in The Atlantic and his insights into the unprecedented scenarios that we may encounter post-election.
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The Election that Could Break America - Recap
We thought we’d keep it light and fun for you all today; that’s why we invited Pulitzer prize- winning journalist, Bart Gellman, to The Common Good to discuss the election (yeah, that one). Media legend and Editor-at-large at Newsweek, Tom Rogers, moderated this important and all too timely discussion that centered on Bart’s recent and widely discussed article in The Atlantic, entitled, The Election that Could Break America. Tom was early (if not first) to note that Trump could very well subvert the election by staying in office no matter the outcome, and he has since written extensively about the topic in Newsweek with former Congressman Tim Wirth. Needless to say, we’re lucky to have two experts join us to discuss the election and potentially the future of our democracy.
Trump’s strategy is opacity, Bart begins ominously. Moreover, He will wield the power of incumbency to benefit his own reelection in a way that we’ve probably never seen before. While Trump will have a lot less running room if he loses by a landslide, we’re likely heading towards uncharted territory.
Gift of prophecy? No, just following the evidence; Bart asserts that no matter the outcome, Trump will not concede that he was defeated.
Both in prepared and off-the-cuff remarks, Trump has flatly said that the only way he could lose this election is if it is rigged against him.
“Our Constitution does not secure the peaceful transition of power, but rather presupposes it,” Bart Gellman.
Bart reminds us that SCOTUS didn’t determine 2000, it was Gore’s decision to ultimately concede.
SCOTUS, or at least Roberts, will be reluctant to weigh in, especially in the face of the court’s waning legitimacy. However, Bart can’t say the same for Kavannaugh at this point.
Bart suggests that if you ask most state legislators if they’d be willing to discard voters in their states, they’d probably say no. It’s hard to look in the mirror and do so; however, Trump’s genius is twofold; his manipulation of attention; and he enures people into grey areas, specifically norm-busting in a way they didn’t necessarily expect. And norms are the glue that keeps most of this together.
Ingredients for a Mess
Most states don’t allow mail-in-ballots to be processed before election day - it’s a slow process, so there will be a backlog. Florida, North Carolina, Arizona are important exceptions.
Trump has deliberately undermined trust in mail-in-ballots, creating a situation where many more Republicans will vote in person, while many more Democrats will vote by mail.
His strategy seems to be to disqualify votes that are counted “late,” locking in votes that are made day of, calling them valid.
Consequently, networks may be reluctant to determine a winner.
There’s no umpire; our elections are administered by thousands of localities. Bart soberly creates a scenario for us in which Trump attempts to blatantly steal the election: we would have mass demonstrations, with tens of millions of people. If they were peaceful, they (and democracy) would win. If they were violent, Trump could call on the troops and take advantage of the chaos.
Tom asks if there’s room for the business community to step in and while Bart acknowledges its potential efficacy, he also remarks “God help us if we are dependent on business leaders to figure out our elections for us.”
Similarly, it would be hard to imagine Republican party leaders diverging too far from Trump at any point in this process - they’re too enmeshed with his narrative.
Audience Question: What reforms can fix this?
The Electoral Count Act is a mess and in need of clarity.
We have a decentralized, underfunded election system that makes it inefficient and vulnerable to foreign threats, so money and some uniformity.
Further Reading from the Transition Integrity Project: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7013152/Preventing-a-Disrupted-Presidential-Election-and.pdf
What We’re Watching this Weekend: City So Real (National Geographic/Hulu): This 5-part docu-series depicts a complex portrait of Chicago from the historic ‘19 mayor’s race to the tumultuous summer of ‘20.
Barton Gellman is a highly respected and much-honored author and journalist, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation in New York. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy for documentary filmmaking, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
His recent articles from The Atlantic have been widely praised for the cogent look at the turmoil and chaos that could erupt from the 2020 election.
Gellman is responsible for many important stories. He led The Washington Post's coverage of the U.S. National Security Agency, which was based in large measure on top-secret documents provided to him by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden. He published a book for Penguin Press on the rise of the surveillance-industrial state in May 2020.
Moderated by Tom Rogers, a true innovator and leader in the field of television, news and entertainment, Tom Rogers is the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor, as well as the founder of MSNBC, when he served as the first President of NBC cable. He is the former CEO of TiVo and is currently Chairman of Engine Media, a broad based sports, esports, and news content & distribution company.
He can also be credited for as bringing Netflix and Amazon to the TV screen. He is the former Senior Counsel to the House Telecommunications Committee where he oversaw the FCC and media industry. He is also an Editor-at-Large for Newsweek.
He has been inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame and has won an Emmy Award for contributions to the development of advanced television and advanced advertising.
"RNC Post-Convention Roundup" with Dan Rather, Margaret Hoover, & Alex Castellanos
Join The Common Good as we breakdown the past four day Republican National Convention. Brilliant political experts and commentators Dan Rather, Margaret Hoover, and Alex Castellanos discuss the RNC and what occurred.
Join The Common Good as we breakdown the past four day Republican National Convention. Brilliant political experts and commentators Dan Rather, Margaret Hoover, and Alex Castellanos discuss the RNC and what occurred.
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The Common Good has been hosting events since 2006 that cover important issues of today, highlighting speakers who have worked to bolster our democracy and can provide great insight on the issues that matter.