DISCLAIMER:Ê This text is not a verbatim transcript.Ê Communication Access Real Time Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication credibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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2020-10-15 7PM EDT
Political Roundtable with the New York Review of Books | LIVE from NYPL
Featuring Jamelle Bouie, Pamela Karlan, Mark Lilla, Timothy Snyder, and Brenda Wineapple
       
    
       >> FAY ROSENFELD:  Hi, everyone.  I am Fay Rosenfeld.  I'm the VP of the New York Public Library.  It's my pleasure to welcome you with the tonight round table.  We have all star of thinkers and writers with us.  Pamela Karlan, Jamelle Bouie, Mark Lilla, Timothy Snyder, and Brenda Winepple. 
       In the interest of time, I won't repeat their bio.  We really couldn't think of a group of people to talk about and make some sense of the political moment.  I want to thank Emily and Gabriel and editor at large for helping put this program together.  We're lucky to be at the library and have the reviews of the archives in our collections.  I think all of us are truly fortunate to be able to rely on the New York review of books as a trusted source in these challenging times we're living there. 
       In a minute, I'm going to bring the panelist in the screen.  Before I do that, I have a few housekeeping notes.  Tonight's conversation is being recorded.  Not any of you.  Just those on screen.  Second, our panelist will take your questions at the end.  If you have a question, you can ask it at any time during the program by typing it in the Q&A chat or YouTube chat or sending an email.  We'll make sure that the panelists see your questions.  Also, at the end, you'll see a twoquestion survey.  Real time captioning are available for tonight's program via StreamText.  You'll find the link after signing up for the event and Zoom and YouTube.  Finally, we hope you'll join us for the upcoming programs. 
       Next Tuesday, OctoberÊ20th, Lyla will join us.  Following week on OctoberÊ26th, Tamara Payne will speak to the Dr.ÊCalvin O. Butts.  This is where her father worked on it.  You can find all of these events and more by going to nypl.org.  It's my pleasure to kick it to Brenda Winepple to kick our program off.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Are we all here?  Yeah.  I think we're missing one of the panelists.  Good evening.  Pleasure to be here with this brilliant panel.  I'm going to outline the method to moderating madness today especially since we'reÊ these days confronting racial crisis, health care, and public health crises, climate crises, potential political crisis, Ruth Ginsburg, and the media.  Since one topic bleeds into the other, this panel is going to straighten it all out by 8:00Êo'clock. 
       With that, I'm going to direct some early questions to each of the panelists that everyone on the panel is free to jump in.  I'm going to the time trueÊ true time honored way of alphabetical.  Jamelle, I'm starting with you and starting with a little bit of weird history that some people may or may not know.  That is 1866 Congress actually reduced the number of Supreme Court justices from 9 to 7 to prevent the first ever to be impeached President and White supremacist Andrew Johnson from adding people to the court.  After Grant was elected they put it back to nine.  We were all familiarÊ some are familiar with FDR in courts. 
       You recently wrote about how democrats fight fire with fight and justices to the Supreme Court.  A couple of questions that I have to start.  One of the pushbacks you might get is is this too much politicizing of the court?  This is not me asking.  This isÊ I already had my answer.  [Laughter]. 
       
       Then, in relation to that, this isÊ I think hasn't come up quite as much.  Do you think lifetime appointments to the court should be revisited?  
       
       >> JAMELLE BOUIE:  First, thank you to the New York Public Library for doing this.  I feel great.  I'm looking forward for this conversation.  On the politicizing the court point.  The court is a political institution.  I think, when people say politicizing the court, what they mean is are you making the court partisan?  You can make the court has been partisan quite a bit of the history.  Of the times we think of the court as nonpartisan or thinking beyond idealized interest or representing exceptions to the rule.  I don't thinkÊ I don't think court expansion should necessarily be thought of as a move. 
       Sort of politicizes the court where it wasn't politicized.  I think we should think of court expansion is jurisdiction where the Congress is able to do under Article III as recognizing that the court is not allowed to do it understood checks and balances.  When you teach the kids about that, President checks the Congress. .  President checks the court.  Elected officials check the court as well.  In the early American republic, there was an understandingÊ there was an idea that the courts are not above sort of the public.  They're notÊ they may be able to comment on the meaning of The Constitution, what the elected officials were doing and not somehow above the entire system itself.  
       My meta argument because I've been writing about this across and on Twitter is we need to think of the court as being an institution that is in need of being checked.  That we haveÊ I think given entirely too much power to the judiciary to determine what The Constitution means.  While judiciary have that authority, judiciary does not solely rest on The Constitution.  The people and court can interpret The Constitution.  We are coming to a point where the rival and reflecting in The Constitution.  We should be prepare to push back on what the court says The Constitution means.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Well, that's really interesting.  In that regard, tooÊ I guess I have to turn to Pam on this topic as well because one of the things you wrote recently inÊ after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died was really kind of, I thought, beautiful.  When you quoted her saying fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.  It was very touching and moving.  To me, I guess, this is a kind of incrementalism that she was promoting and suggesting, I'm wonderingÊ in light of what Jamelle is saying, too, is it possible in today's court as it's conceived to be able to do that?  Do you think?  
       
       >> PAM KARLAN:  You know, I thinkÊ you have to think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as both a justice on the Supreme Court and before that as an activist.  I think some of what Jamelle's point is we make the courts as much as the courts make us.  We are coming to the end of a period that I think is the lifetimes of the people and audience in which the courts was thought of generally as a potentially progressive institution.  That is not over American history where the court has been for most of American history. 
       If you think back to the Lochner era in the turn of the 20th Century, the court was there striking down labor laws and unionization.  We might see the court this that position again which requires a political movement to change how we elect officials and by changing the elected officials are changing the court.  It takes a long time.  It took a long time for us to get to where we are now and take a long time to kind of bring the court back around to being of a progressive institution. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Yeah.  Mark, you wanted to say something?  
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  Yeah.  I'm wondering whether Pam and Jamelle are on the same page on this because what I just understood from Pam is that it takes a long time to change because one has to win elections in order to then appoint judges.  Republicans have done a very good job of building up a whole lethal machine beginning with federalist society and summer camps for young conservatives.  I thought Jamelle was making a different argument which is thatÊ if I understood you, that we've given too much power to the courts.  So that argument sounds a lot like arguments beginning in the 1980s that, in fact, we kind of advocated or democratic responsibilities in the legislative branch and shunted things over to the judiciary. 
       That needs to be corrected.  To have a more political, political system.  Is that your position?  
       
       >> JAMELLE BOUIE:  That is my position.  That's right.  I sort of broadlyÊ I sort of broadly think one of the critical problems facing American government right now is this lack ofÊ active isn't the right word.  Not energetic across all fields.  American government is sluggish.  It's unwilling to act.  I think this is the thing.  Especially in the past decade which has resulted in both the executive accumulating lots of influence and sort of autonomy.  Then the courts also doing the same.  To my mind, kind of the problem here is Congress is not really acting as it was supposed to. 
       I seeÊ there's a sense in which I think thatÊ as much as court expansion isn't necessary tactic, it's essentially to say to conservative republicans that we understand you wanted to make the courts into this ideological but courts should not serve this purpose and nullify the whole thing together to show you that you can't do this and deal with Trump to make this happen was unacceptable.  I think it's a tactical thing.  The only solution of a problem of a eudoxie is an energetic Congress.  At the end of the day, a Congress acting and acting regularly on what they're supposed to do is the thing.  I think progressives should want that.  I think the progressive agenda depends on the act of Congress, act of representation, on all of these lower case D democratic things in the ways that the agenda does not. 
       
       >> PAM KARLAN:  There's one thing I think we need to separate out is the courts in the capacity as interpreting The Constitution where I'm with Jamelle. 
       The other thing is the courts enforcing the laws that Congress wrote.  You can't say, for example, we need to get the courts out of the business of hearing section 1983Êcases about police brutality.  You can't get the courts of business hearing the labors case.  If the courts strikes the Affordable Care Act this winter, they are going to do it on a statutory grounds.  It's a totally erroneous of statutory interpretation of severability loss.  Even if you can get the courts to be less imperialistic of The Constitution, there is still this question on how the courts can enforce the laws coming from Congress. 
       We're having problems now with the question how to enforce the voters' rights act.  Congress wrote the statute.  We don't have a court that is prepared to enforce that statute in its fullest sense. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  In terms of tactics going forward, is it possibleÊ is it a good tactic to put out there maybe lifetime appointments are not the best thing because it kind of calcifies the court in a certain sense?  I mean, I can see a counterargument.  People on the court who don't have to be with the person who put them on there can change their opinions.  Although, I don't know in history if that's happened all that much in that particular case. 
       Well, given that, I want to change this sort of focus a little bit to the language.  Mark, you write about language often and very eloquently.  In the role of language in public discourse, it's so important.  To just kind of segue from the court not too far from it, this notion of quote unquote packing the court really bothers me because point of fact it has a kind of identical valence with it.  When you're packing something sounds a little negative opposed to rethinking judicial roles in that particular sense.  I was wondering what your thoughts about how we change that kind of public discourse or if it's all possible?  
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  Right.  I thinkÊ you can find another word of packing, but it is packing.  Because the motivation as we've just heard as we've been talkingÊ the motivation is not because we sort of rethought the system.  If it is, we need to justify why we would need more judges.  Not say less.  Because we could also go in the other direction somehow.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Right. 
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  No.  The motivation which is totally understandable and just is what happened with garland.  The need to kind of, you know, remove that stain from the court, I think, is justifiable motive.  We shouldn't use euphemisms.  IfÊ what they're trying to do is pack the courts by keeping someoneÊ keeping a presidentÊ scandalousÊ keeping a president from being able to have a nominee voted on.  You have to respond. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Yeah.  Absolutely.  I'm still interested in the role of language in that particular sense because you do get these, you know, what we call know now is sound bites that really have a kind of idealogical baggage regardless.  After the last presidential debate, worth noting there was supposed to be another one tonight.  After the last one, there were a number of commentators were saying Biden didn't answer the question about packing the court. 
       Just the use of that particular language was already putting a kind of point of view about that.  But in any eventÊ one of the things thatÊ Mark, I'll continue with you for a second.  Your recent book, one with future liberal, you've been quoted a lot.  We need no more marches.  We need more mayors.  When you wrote that as opposed to now, would youÊ do you think there's been a renewed political activism is kind of what Jamelle was talking about.  Go ahead. 
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  What I meant by no more didn't mean to stop them.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Of course.  [Laughter]. 
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  Additional ones; right?  Actually, this connects a bit to what Jamelle was just saying.  That is the kind of weigh in which the political system is in a sense depoliticized; right?  So people think of political activities either finding a brief and going to the Supreme Court and running and Congress.  On the other hand, going to the streets or going on the Internet in order to have some affect on public opinion.  But, the central questions that matters especially regarding race require the democrats hold institutional power in an unbroken way in the institutions.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Within the institutions. 
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  Take the question of police brutality.  WhoÊ if you want to change police behavior, to begin with you need new police chiefs.  Who hires police chiefs?  Mayors or elected officials or commissioners.  If you want to prosecute the police officers, that's the decision of an attorney general.  State attorney general.  That person is in the certain states voted in or appointed governor who is elected.  The incredible surge of energy and care and totally surprised me.  The sense of solidarity after the George Floyd killing.  It was a remarkable moment.  That is not going to change things on the ground unless people putting the effort elected. 
       That means not only elected by large in blue states.  It means going to red states and winning them back.  Part of that task is, one, to have a new voting rights act the day after President Biden is signed in.  Laws on redistricting if we can do that.  And we need people to go and help Black candidates for office win.  What I find particularly frustratingÊ you must have seen this on somewhere in a video.  There was that incident when a group of youngÊ mainly White kids in black Tshirts were harassing people in a restaurant in Adams Morgan in Washington trying to get everyone there to raise their fist as a sign of solidarity.  
       Now, when people were fighting for voters rights at the end of the 50s and 60s, White college students got on a bus and went there physically.  They didn't hide behind their computers or street theater.  They went and they put their bodies on the line.  They put their time on the line.  And they fought for concrete political power.  What I worry about is that apart from all the good things that came out of this summer is that it will encourage a kind of style of engagement that is not what we need if we want real concrete change right now. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  I agree with you.  There were also a lot of gorilla that was in a sense an aspect of what you're talking about people going up to other people and kind of intimidating them.  What there wasn't is constant media coverage of something like that.  So that really makes a difference.  It's interesting when you talk about the need for social solidity and certainly in terms of police brutality and the kind of racial injustice we saw.  Two issues thatÊ one that comes to mind directly forÊ Timothy, if you, recently you had a really difficult and heart wrenching ballot with a health care system. 
       One of the things quite apart from your own difficult experience, one of the things you noticed is that the issue of racial justice and systemic racism was really built right into the hospitals.  ItÊ you've got people marching because of the murder of George Floyd and so many people.  ItÊ almost mundane level, I was very struck by what you found in the hospital where, I think, youÊ your physician was an African American woman, and she wasn't really being listened to.  It was really kind of stunning.  Did you ever talk with her about it, and was there a way that that will combineÊ that brings us, of course, to the health care crisis and the pandemic.  
       
       >> TIMOTHY SNYDER:  Well, what I realized as aÊ as an American White person who was almost dead is that our awareness of race goes all the way down.  When I was not capable of thinking about much else and when I was religious thinking about trying to stay alive, my mind was still intrinsically working around the issue of race.  The kind person you mentioned was a friend of mine who spent those 17Êhours with me in the emergency room.  She was not my physician.  A physician who chose to be with me.  During that time, my brain which was completely unfiltered.  I was just about gone, was obsessing about whether her badge was out. 
       It was a classic African American issue.  If her badge was out, maybe other doctors would listen to her.  It was freezing cold.  She's got her fleece zipped up.  They can't see her badge.  Outside the emergency room, there were two cops.  One of them was talking about African Americans as unpeople.  Deeper in the emergency room, there are several young African American men who needed attention in a way which was urgent and demanding of the energy of the physicians around me.  All of those were going on.  In the beginning of this pandemic which at her age is going to kill Black people at a rate four times bigger than White people. 
       This experience goes a bit to Mark's comments.  This experience was also one which reminded me of how important physicality actually is to people.  One of the things thatÊ one of the basic ways, I think, we go wrong when we talk about rights in this country is that we leave out the body.  We let the body go into the realm of the market.  We make it too easy for some people to think, well, other people's bodies don't deserve the same kind of attention that maybe my body does.  There's a fundamental  you ask about problems and solutions.  I think there's a fundamental American trick here which is, if you don't think of rights as including your body, if your body is some sense a commodity which it is in a sense of medicine. 
       I'm a privileged person.  Lots of people gets sick all the time.  People die for a lot of stupid reasons.  I was in the hospital for stupid listens which had to do with the fact that commercial medicine kept pushing me and out not letting me in when I needed to be in.  My point is, if we treat the body as something about we have rightsÊ in other words, if we start with the idea that access to health care is a right and not a privilege and not a benefit, we can get closer to a systemÊ we start from the assumption that everybody is included.  In a whole lot of ways and not just in terms of our health but as we feel about one another as Americans, that would be a very good thing. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Yeah.  What you talked about how people get preferential treatment in an unequal health system.  Then sort of you creating two different kinds of world.  In thatÊ I guess, that goes back around to the courts again.  I don't want to go quite there yet.  Back to the courts. 
       I want to stay with you for a second, Timothy, because there'sÊ because you're less known for that horrific experience than your writing on tyranny.  We can't have a panel discussion 19Êdays before an election without talking aboutÊ not justÊ all the aspects.  Voter suppression and everything we've mentioned in a kind of tyranny.  One of the things you said is a scary but a nice line.  In the history of tyranny, the government becomes the body guard of the gangster.  One of the issues seems to me that reallyÊ that you saidÊ really Trump has spelled out what his intention is to do.  As I said, that gets us back to the courts.  To basically get rid of claim fraud from the ballots, declare victory regardless, expect state governments to act contrary to vote counts, to court chaos from White nationalists, and expect the Supreme Court with a new person seated on it to install. 
       I was wondering, if that explainsÊ if that's the caseÊ maybe you can elaborate on it.  It explains why Trump is so determined just to speak to his base and not the socalled, if it exists, decided voter, moderate voter, independent voter. 
       
       >> TIMOTHY SNYDER:  I'm going to try to make a segue which you didn't make.  I'm going toÊ 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Be my guess.  I don't like moderating.  [Laughter]. 
       
       >> TIMOTHY SNYDER:  I want to suggest that the two questions are actually related.  That health care in this country is actually directly related to the possibility of the collapse of democracy.  I think, when we compete with one another for health care which we do, we're less patriotic.  We're less capable regarding of our follow citizens of our fellow people.  When we know our health care depends on somebody else not receiving health care, we're less patriotic.  This year, the lack of universal health care pumps anxiety into the society and polarity like Mr.ÊTrump is capable of directing other ways.  One of the things we're talking about is so fraught is so much of anxiety and confusion and contestation around illness which for the most part is totally unnecessary.  It didn't have to happen. 
       Let me continue with the point with Mr.ÊTrump is smart.  I think a lot of folks on the left dismiss him in ways he shouldn't be dismissed.  He is quite intelligent.  He's got political talent.  He has known June of the latest that he is not going to win the election.  The gesture of JuneÊ1st is not someone of someone who is not going to win.  The tweet of July is not the gesture of someone who think he's going to win.  I think that we're in a typical authoritarian candidates in two ways.  It's typical for where his choice is the poor house and the right house. 
       It's typical for people I die in prison or in my bed.  For Trump, he owes a million dollars where he can't pay off.  Americans are slow to pick up on this.  When you're outside of the U.S., everybody sees it.  Everybody. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  He's going to jail. 
       
       >> TIMOTHY SNYDER:  Everybody sees who he is.  The other way this is a typical authoritarian situation is elections reason just elections.  Elections are just occasions to do other things.  I want to agree with the premise of your question.  I don't think Mr.ÊTrump is trying to win this election.  I think he's aiming to get enough of hisÊ knowing he's going to lose because he's smart and can read polls.  Knowing he's going to lose he's aiming to get enough of his supporters angry enough that they can play a part in the chaos in November somehow to let him stay in power. 
       That amid of chaos is intimidating the Supreme Court of giving the Supreme Court a pretext or excuse to do something which they shouldn't do. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  That's terrifying.  I'm going to throw it back to you, Pam.  Do you think the Supreme Court can and will be intimidating in that way?  
       
       >> PAM KARLAN:  You know, I'd like add one thing to the list of evidence that Trump thinks he's going to lose which is ramming Amy Coney Barrett right now.  Here's the person I'm going to nominate.  Reelect me.  I promise I'm going to reelect them.  If you think you're out of there on JanuaryÊ20th, you've got to grab everything now.  You're in the game theory.  Last period problem which isÊ there's not another round after this. 
       Can he intimidate the Supreme Court?  I don't think it's so much can we intimidate the Supreme Court as the worldview of people who think the election is fraud rather than lack of participation.  Since 2000Ê this is not something true in the period of 1980 and 2000.  Since 2000, we've been in the period where republicans report to see fraud everywhere in the election system.  There's no evidence of this fraud.  Trump put together a commission led by Chris Covat, the ultimate fraud seeker.  They couldn't find jack.  The reason why they couldn't find jack is the level of fraud in American elections is quite low.  Almost all of the fraud that we have is fraud that involves local elections where we're swinging 50 or 150 votes will determine who gets to be on the school board or road commissioner. 
       What happens is you have a Supreme CourtÊ we're seeing this in case after case going up there on what's called the shadow docket.  Where they don't hear the oral argument but rule late at night.  We're seeing case after case where the Supreme Court is refusing to acknowledge the fact that COVID changes the voting ability of lots of people.  A district court judge in South Carolina said we can't require people to have witnesses for their ballots in COVID era.  If you're looked up at homeÊ Supreme Court reimposed that.  The State of Texas, a district judge said, given the COVID problemÊ even the people under 65 should have the right to vote.  The Supreme Court refused to allow that to go in effect. 
       They're doing this again and again.  I don't think they're being intimidated into doing this.  I think they're fundamentally out of sympathy with the idea that every American citizen who is eligible to be able to cast a ballot and have it counted.
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  That's really shocking.  That level is unbelievable really.  It gets back to, I guess, going back around againÊ it gets back to the question of the electoral college, too. 
       
       >> PAM KARLAN:  What kind of college is lesser than the problem of the Senate.  Electoral college is lesser of a problem than Senate.  Fundamental changes going on.  In the next years, 70% of Americans are going to live in 15 states.  Which means 70% of Americans will elect 30 senators.  The other 30% of Americans will elect 70 senators.  Especially the way people are given the way people are sorting themselves. 
       You are not going to have a country with the potential with majority rule.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  No.  It's minority rule. 
       
       >> PAM KARLAN:  Even if we don't end up with tyranny, we'll indicate up with numerical minority control.  It's Whiter than America as a whole and more conservative than America as a whole.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Yeah.  It'sÊ I don't know what to say.  If the question is putative fraud, pretend fraud. Ê if it's a question of skew demographics and changing the senateÊ it's alsoÊ I just want to bring it and maybe go back to Jamelle from a different point of view because you work for major media organization or organizations.  How responsible really is the media for this?  One of the things that is so weird to me is the fact that they're going with two town halls tonight.  That, for my sort of eloquently vantage pointÊ in a sense, we're building this right in. 
       To go with Timothy's point tooÊ Timothy was saying the gangsters in the White House doesn't want to wind up in the clink.  There's no vantage from your coming in through the media.  Media doesn't even coffer what's going on in most places these days.  The fact that that the president of curse Stan resigned after the protest yesterday.  I'm thinking, yes, political process.  Yes, getting the Senate changed.  Yes, more sort of activism at not just the polls but in terms of political action.  HowÊ I guess the simplest way to put this is how do you change minds?  You're trying, aren't you?  Jamelle.  [Laughter]. 
       
       >> JAMELLE BOUIE:  I suppose.  It's an interesting question because, if you're thinking in terms of what is driving everything in American society, American politics right now, obviously, some portion of it has to do with media, has to do with all sorts of media outlets in the ways that Americans are getting information and understanding their place with each other, understanding how other citizens see them and how they see other citizens.  I think thatÊ if you zoom out even furtherÊ I want to get back to something Tim said when he started about the body and politics.  It just got me thinking in the ways of which you can think of a political society as a body.  That's the famous metaphor. 
       This giant body.  It seems to be that what we've been seeing in American life for a long time but really acutely in the last 15Êyears or so is the extent to which it's become clear.  Unmistakable that people who were once relegated outside of the body of American society, whether they are Hispanic immigrants or Hispanics in general, whether they're African Americans, LGBT people.  People who existed or granted the rights to participate or understood broadly to not really represent what the body is, it's clear that that's no longer the case.  They are kind of the American public now or will be the American public.  I think that Trump, for exampleÊ the recent among some conservatives kind of vogue for saying United States really isn't the democracy.  We have no obligation to democratic processes.  I think these things are all attempts to deal with the fact that, as the body of America changes over time, certain things will no longer be live political options. 
       The kind of small government ideological conservatism may not be viable anymore in this changed America.  What the political struggle is is how do we either cut off that part of the body that we did not want to be there?  Whether that's disenfranchisement or closing down the boarders or doing whatever to keep the people out or subordinate.  Or how do we reconfigure our bodies so we don't have to rely on that part?  Meaning, how can we build minority rule or institutions that preclude that from happening?  That to me is the groundsÊ which means I don't think that there'sÊ there's no easy solution to that.  It's something we may have to pass through and hope that the tumbles from it isn't to destructive that it ends up taking the body down itself altogether. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Mark, I'm going to throw it over to you.  Is there some wayÊ oh, Tim, did you want to say something?  
       
       >> TIMOTHY SNYDER:  If I could.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  So much or you, Mark.  
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  I want to come back. 
       
       >> TIMOTHY SNYDER:  Ruling that out a little bit.  When you ask a journalist, it's hard for a journalist to say it's not our fault.  Our problem is we don't have enough journalistÊ our problem is we don't have too many.  We don't have enough journalist.  One of the problems in the U.S. is the loss of journalism.  Most of the country is now a news desert.  30% of the population is going to vote for 70% of the the senators is one big desert at this point.  Something that Mark said we don't actually know too much about the Black lives matter protest because they were widespread.  One of the reasons why the pandemic was so bad is we didn't have local reporters covering the hospitals the way we would have. 
       One of the things politics is so rotten is politicians now make their way up without reporters investigating they will.  In a broader way, not having local news means people immediately turn to national news or to conspiracy theories.  They have fewer things to hold them together as a local level.  I just want to make a big push for one of the factors being the mind.  Without local factuality, it's hard to have a national mind. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Okay.  That is a good point.  Mark, you had something you wanted to say, too. 
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  Yeah.  I want to push back on Jamelle's point about being a new body politics.  One thing I noticed just being in the academy over the past 20 or 30Êyears is how an interest after the 70s and marginalized people which was a moral concern has led to an overestimation of the number of people there are and of their historical significance in the past.  Students end up coming out of the university with a distorted sense of what the country actually looks like. 
       They've spent so much time thinking about marginalized groups that distorts their picture of the bigger America out there.  I've tried a couple times to have my students guess how many transgender Americans there are.  The answer is less than one half of one percent.  Last time, if you looked at these; right?  When it comes to evangelicals, that's one in five.  I asked my students which group did you learn most about in college?  They laughed because they know the answer is they learned more about the marginal groups than about American evangelicals.  In giving the problems and the Senate, in giving the sortingÊ there's a new book by Richard Alba on this.  The fact that most young people who were born ofÊ with a double ancestry, tend to identify more as White. 
       This is a White country for quite a while in terms of political power.  What that means is that, one still has to focus on convincing White Americans to show a sense of solidarity, to vote democratic, to vote their interest when it comes to health care and everything else and not try to separate ourselves out and wait for the vote to come in with the new population because it's not.  Not very soon.  In terms of power, it's certainly not coming very soon. 
       
       >> JAMELLE BOUIE:  Just to clarify.  I wasn't necessarily making a point of political power.  I was making a point about perception of the kind of cultural nature of the country.  For the sake of example, in Wisconsin which is most White state.  Conservative politics in Wisconsin is mainly focused on demonstrate gradingÊ most places but places in the Wisconsin, imagination areÊ it's for minorities, for Blacks, for liberals, White liberals, and cultural elites.  I think that's the thing which isÊ when I say that, part of the body appears foreign to many Americans. 
       That's what I mean.  Not just nonWhites who are, I think, at the moment a third of the American public.  You're right.  Given intermarriage, given demographic trends, given the fact that some percentage of say, Hispanic Americans, do understand themselves as being White and not belonging to a race called Hispanic.  I think your observations of what demographics mean for politics is correct.  I don't think that changes for Americans in that future looks threatening.  That future may still be culturally different.  It's stillÊ a figure who is like Barack Obama who is in the tradition of American politics appears to a lot of people to be hopeless E radical because he represents a different picture of America which some Americans believe does not include them. 
       To make this not sort of a disagreement but a disagreement/agreement Oreo or something, I'll say that part of the political task is persuading those Americans that they do have a place in this America.  Even as cultural Moe rays change.  Even as what the meeting with American and what that looks like is a little different than what it was.  Instead of an Italian last name, it's a Hispanic last name or Asian last name.  People who consider themselves as a traditional Americans are part of this society and claim of this society. 
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  I think that's actually right.  It sorts of connects to something I was thinking about.  Tim might have some thoughts about this.  I was so struck and moved by what happened this summer and the demonstrations and the fact thatÊ I read a lot foreign newspapers.  Demonstrations around the world.  I looked at where they were demonstrations in support of BLM and George Floyd.  Demonstrations in Kazakhstan, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, Iran, Israel, Poland, and other places.  There's a sense in whichÊ for example, the gay rainbow flags is an American invention but have become a universal symbol.  It's recognizing to everyone in the world right now. 
       There's a sense there of sort of one population that's transnational that feels a great sense of solidarity among themselves.  Then there are the White nationalist Identitarians who feel a great senseÊ who are becoming a network around the world through Eastern Europe, Philippines, India, North America and South America who themselves have created their own world and their own networks with a sense of solidarity there that's made possible through social media and so on.  What that means is that, when you have this sort of gap between two populations that Jamelle is talking about and you have the option of having solidarity with people everywhere in the world who shares your status, there's less of an inventive for people to develop a sense of solidarity and knowledge of each other within each country.  
       I would imagine that a lesbian in Poland feels more solidarity with a lesbian in hungry than a Hungarian nationalists.  One of the task and not just in the United States is find a sense of solidarity if it's tied to the place and the nation we live in so we can live together.  Not just an American problem.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Good points.  Absolutely.  Brings me back to the need for, you know, more political andÊ more political coverage at the local level, too.  Tim's point.  Speaking of coverage at the local level, it's time to answer some of the questions from the audience in so far that I'm receiving them here. 
       The first one is two interconnected questions for everyone and anyone only the panel.  It's this.  Do the panelists have any advice for concerned citizens before and on and after election day?  Any ideas or steps for action?  Related toÊ from the same person, I assume.  What should we do if Trump claims victory without winning or tries to quote unquote get rid of the ballot?  This is practical politics now to bring us back to the election.  Anyone want to take that on?  
       
       >> PAM KARLAN:  The obvious first thing to do is for people to vote and to vote early and follow the rules.  If you go either to vote.org or you go to healthyelections.org which are both nonpartisan sites, the healthy election is a joint MIT thing.  vote.org is civil society group.  They'll tell you exactly what you need to do and where you are. 
       If you go powerthepolls.org, you can find out about being a poll watcher or a poll worker.  You can contact the protection work.  Those are concrete things that people can do between now and election day.  Then the other thing to keep in mind is that depending on how the ballots come in and the like, don't expect to necessarily know all the results on election night.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Exactly. 
       
       >> PAM KARLAN:  Americans are used to instant gratification.  The polls closes at 7:00Êp.m. and it's 7:01.  That might not happen this year because of so many people casting by mail.  In a number of different states, they can't start counting by mail.  Some states have be counting.  In California, for example, ballots can be expected after the election as long as they're post dated on election night.  Don't let Donald Trump claim gratification and waiting for the blue flag to come in. 
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Everyone should have a copy of Truman.  Tim, go ahead. 
       
       >> TIMOTHY SNYDER:  Yeah.  I wanted to add to the list of things you can do.  There's a very fine organization, protect the results.  You can go to protecttheresults.com.  Plenty of localities in the U.S. amplify one of Pam's points.  It's important we remain calm on NovemberÊ3rd.  Not just because it'sÊ may well to take a while to know the results but people including the President of the United States who will try very hard to make us panic at that particular point and when ought not to panic.  There are days and weeks to count the vote. 
       One should make sure that one's own emotions aren't contributing to the fake crisis that the president might use to characterize as an emergency.  That said, I think we should also all be ready to endure those weeks with the readiness to protest peacefully, the readiness to do things to make sure that the atmosphere and such, that the Supreme Court and everyone else understands that most Americans are in favor of democracy and most Americans would like to have their votes counted.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Yes.  Absolutely.  That's wonderful.  There's another question that is a little bit more less practical but perhaps goes to the same place.  This questionnaire asks who exactly profits from the reduction of democracy in which as Tim said we believe to anarchy?  What's the desired gain in this political process, and who receives it?  
       
       >> MARK LILLA:  Tim has a lot to say.  One of the things I would say in the offset is it leads people toÊ in country after country, we've seen that happen.  Electoral to do in our system like ours.  Trump has no problem being a messy figure.  It'sÊ he's become so popular in the German right because of QAnon.  One of the fantasies is he's going to come in with American troops and free the Germans.  Historically, you expect someone to come in as a savior who is going to get things running again.  
       
       >> BRENDA WINEPPLE:  Yeah.  [Laughter]. 
       
       I don't even know what to say to that.  The short answer though is Trump really in this particular juncture.  To see himself kind of a savior I would think also goes against some of the religious tenets of many of the people who presume to like him.  I just wonder what it would take to have them peel away from him.  One of the odd thoughts I had was thatÊ with the coming, I suppose, confirmation to go back to the Supreme CourtÊ confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett and the people really upset about a woman's right to choose will be satisfied by her election toÊ nomination or confirmation to the Supreme Court. 
       Maybe thenÊ maybe then decide we've had enough with Trump.  We got what we wanted and will vote in another direction.  That's just my fantasy.  That'sÊ I'm toldÊ all the time we have for audience questions.  We can probably talk until NovemberÊ3rd.  We have other things to do.  Vote. 
       [End]