About : standard furniture grand designs instructions
Title : standard furniture grand designs instructions
standard furniture grand designs instructions
well welcome toelection 2016 class here at stanford universitythat's intended both for the undergraduateand graduate student body as well as for theentire community. my name is rob reich. i'm a professor in thepolitical science department. i'm one of the threeinstructors of the class. i'm joined by david kennedy,my colleague in the history department, emeritusprofessor, pulitzer prize
winning historian. and jim steyer, the ceo andfounder of common sense media and a lecturer inthe csre program-- the comparative studiesand race ethnicity program. we've been teaching thisclass every election cycle for the pastthree or four cycles. and i think you'll agreethat doing it this year, the stakes seemhigher than ever. democracy seems more fragilethan it has been in the past.
and we've organizedthe class this year in the same way we've doneit in years past which is a series ofevening classes where we take a particular topicfor every class session, invite some very distinguishedguests to help us explore the topic, and have an on stageconversation with our guests. the topics we'll bedoing this year, tonight we're focusing oncampaign strategy. next week we will betalking about issues
concerning existential securitythreats to the united states. the following week, we focus onsocial mobility and inequality. we then move to the issue,perhaps especially relevant to folks here in silicon valley,concerning the future of work and the various waysin which the economy is creating a much differentlabor market in the future. we then conclude the classjust before election day with, i think, anappropriate session on the future ofdemocracy itself
and what this electionsuggests about it. we don't meet on election night. and our last sessionon november 15th, the week after the electionis a wrap up of what happened. [laughter] david kennedy: damage control. jim steyer: orwhat didn't happen. rob reich: or what didn'thappen depending on the outcome. well for those of you who havedone the class in the past,
you'll know that witha class this large, it's very difficult forus to arrange questions from you during the session. in part because theclass is being videotaped and then will be placedonline afterwards and we'd have to findall types of permissions amongst that many of you, avery complicated procedure. so instead, there areonline discussion forums for the class wherestudents participate online
prior to the class session,after the class session. we have questions thathave been contributed by people in the classwhich will make their way into conversation tonight. and i want to mention that--with a special emphasis here-- so if you areparticipating in the class, one of the great aspirations wecollectively have for the class experience is that this onlinediscussion forum will carry out something that is almostimpossible to achieve
in our ordinaryteaching at stanford. stanford universitystudents are extraordinarily diverse on virtuallyevery dimension you can imagine,except for one, where there is no diversityat all and that's age. this classroom setting, whichinvites the community as well as students intothe class, allows cross-generationalpolitical conversation. and we hope that happenscoming into the auditorium,
leaving theauditorium, and online. so i want to invite youto accept the invitation to participate in thiscross-generational political conversation thathappens online. with that i just want tomention a couple things about the formatof tonight's class. it will be thesame in the future. i'm going to turn the floorover to jim in a moment introduce our distinguishedguests for the evening.
and then david kennedywill take the stage for about 10 or 15 minutesto give a short framing that will set the foundationof our conversation with our guests, a capsulehistory of the us presidency. so with that, i turnthe floor over to jim. jim steyer: great. thank you, rob. i would certainlyagree that-- first of all it's great tosee everybody here.
we are very psychedfor this class. this should be a great eveningand a really great quarter. i agree with rob. it is a unique and excitingelection, unique certainly in all of our lifetimes. i would say we have a uniqueand exciting slate of guests. and for me it's a unique honorto teach with david and rob. so this should be a lot of fun. i'm going to brief introduction.
i actually asked myfriend mike mccurry how he would like to introduceme-- me to introduce him tonight. and being the good old irishboy that he is, he said, jim, think of yourself likethe body at an irish wake. we need you to have theparty, but nobody really wants you to say very much. so i'll be sort ofbrief, but these guys are suchdistinguished-- opening,
i guess that i should say that. so first of all, you should knowmike mccurry is a local boy. he went to san carlos high andthen graduated from ravenswood. he was the governor of thecalifornia junior state. so he's potentially thefuture governor of california. he went to princeton andgeorgetown for masters. but he has workedfor a who's who in american politicson the democratic side. so he's worked at differenttimes for monahan, john glenn,
bruce babbitt, bob kerrey, lloydbentsen, warren christopher-- stanford's own. and, of course, hewas press secretary for bill clinton from 1994-1998. truly interesting years indeed. probably don'tmatch up to these, but they're getting close. and i would say thatfor everyone i've ever known in that role-- fromjay carney who david knows
really well-- to someof the other people who have been in that job, theirrole model is mike mccurry. two reasons,competence, kindness. that's what i would tell you. he's been also a leadingpolitical and communications strategist for years. for relevance for tonight, he isthe co-chair of the commission on presidential debates. so he oversees the presidentialdebates with a commission
that he co-chairswith frank fahrenkopf. mike mccurry: but notresponsible for the content. jim steyer: but he'snot responsible. but he is responsible for whathe's going to say tonight, however. all right. the only other things iwould tell you is he's incredibly committed to stuff. he's been a board memberat common sense for years.
he's on the boardof our good friend billy shore share our strength. he's the dad of three. and like most of usup here, he married up to a very fine woman. so he has a lot to say tonight. david plouffe, nowa local boy since he moved to san francisco. but he's born and raisedin wilmington, delaware.
interesting from aworking class background. he's a phillies fan, althoughthat's irrelevant this year, is for all of us giants' fans. sorry. i had to nail him for that. went to the universityof delaware. left college before graduation--for all you students out there-- left collegeto go into politics, and 20 years later graduatedfrom the university
of delaware. along with one ofour frequent guests, steve schmidt, who also wentto the university of delaware, left before he graduatedand then finally went back and got his degree. but david, like mike,has had a who's who of colleagues in theworld of politics. he worked for tom harkin,dick gephardt, the d triple-c. and he and davidaxelrod, his partner,
had a political consultingfirm before they discovered an obscure state senator fromillinois, who they obviously led to an extraordinaryvictories in 2008 and 2012. and to characterizedavid's role in that, which he is extremelymodest about and would neversay about himself, he's usually referred toas the mastermind of that. and to quote his friend andformer boss, barack obama, he ran the bestpolitical campaign
in the history ofthe united states. and many of thetechniques and strategies that are being employed, withvarying degrees of success in 2016, were created under theleadership of david plouffe. he was the senior advisorto president obama, obviously ran 2008,helped run 2012, and now gives someoccasional advice to hillary rodham clinton. for all of the engineeringstudents in the audience,
he has transformed himselfinto a senior adviser at uber, which is why he's nowhere in the bay area. and like all of us he marriedup to a fabulous woman who happened to beone of my colleagues at common sense, olivia. they have two kids. he is a doting dad. and we are truly lucky tohave him here in the bay area and to welcome him to stanford.
and we want to keep him inthe bay area for many years to come. there you go. [applause] david kennedy: so you mightthink of me as the undercard before we get to the main event. but i'd like to get usstarted this evening with just a bit of historical perspectiveon the unique institution that is the american presidency.
we're going to be talkingabout all kinds of elections in the next several weeks. but the presidentialelection is the one that i think commands mostof our attention and focus. so i think it'sappropriate to begin here. so i'll begin withsome observations about the constitutionalarchitecture of the presidency. and then i want,briefly, to discuss a set of changes in thenature of the institution
of the presidency andits place in our larger political firmament. several things that beganto appear and have matured, but began to appear inthe early 20th century, and give us a legacyof where we are today. and those thingsinvolve new expectations about the role ofthe president in our overall political system. secondly they involvetechnologically driven changes
in the media. and thirdly,something that i think is not properly appreciated, butmaybe it will be by all of you before we're done, theemergence of primary elections. but first, some numbers. there have been 44 presidencies,but only 43 presidents. thanks to grover cleveland. all 44 have been males. all but two have beenwhite protestant males.
17 have been electedto second terms. that's the equivalent ofsecond marriages, the triumph of hope over experience. 26 have been lawyers. 18 had previously served inthe house of representatives, 17 as governors, 16 as ussenators, 14 as vice president, and nine have been generals. and though i know this cutsacross the grain of where we live here, just twopresidents-- and not
a particularly happytwo, i'm afraid-- could be described as having hadcareers as businessmen. that's herbert hooverand jimmy carter. eight have died inoffice, four of them assassinated, two have beenimpeached-- andrew johnson and bill clinton. and one, richardnixon, resigned. but here's the singlemost important number. the president is justone-- one of the 536
elected federally electedofficials in washington dc. now for thesepurposes, i'm treating the president and vice presidentas a single political unit. and it's worth repeating that. the president is butone of the 536 elected officials in washington. the others of course are the100 members of the united states senate and the 435 members ofthe house of representatives. some people in this roomwill remember the journalist
and chronicler of manypresidential races in the mid 20thcentury, theodore white. and in one of his severalbooks on presidential elections from 1960 forward,he said quite simply, "the supreme dutyof the president is to protect us fromeach others' congressman." that remark actually points tosome persistently problematic attributes of the presidency. and indeed, problems withthe entire american political
system. so the constitutionalframers, in that summer 1787 inphiladelphia, could be said actually to haveinvented the presidency. colonial governors-- whichmight be taken as a model but shouldn't be-- had not beenelected, but royally appointed and usually royallyresented by the people over whom they presided. the articles of confederationmade no provision whatsoever
for an executive department. so the framers knew theweaknesses of the articles. and they wanted,somehow or other, to create aneffective executive. but remembering the abusesof those much despised royal governors, they alsofeared the concentration of executive authority. so how to strike the balance? the result was thefamous or infamous system
of checks and balances,that once upon a time, all american students learnedin their high school civics classes. the framers gave the presidentthe power to make treaties and to superintendthe executive branch and simultaneouslyhedged that power by requiring the advice andthe consent of the senate on treaties as well as on a highlevel executive appointments. and indeed, in theunited states government,
senatorial approval isrequired in some departments down to the fifthlevel of appointment. which means that this countryhas a far larger politically appointed class that changesevery four or eight or 12 years and a far smallercivil service class the stays permanently inplace, which means we have much more fluctuationin policy and uncertainty about the future. conversely, theframers conferred
some legislativepower on the president in the form of the veto. and they mixed bothpresidential, or executive, and congressional prerogativeinto the judiciary branch by making the presidentresponsible for nominating persons to the federalbench, but only subject to finalconfirmation by the senate. now the delegates to theconstitutional convention who advocated most stronglyfor a robust executive
were alexanderhamilton-- familiar to us all thanks to broadway--and james wilson, the less familiar, from pennsylvania. so here's what hamilton had tosay about the executive branch in federalist number 70. he said "a feeble executiveimplies a feeble execution of the government. a feeble executionis but another phrase for a bad execution.
and a government, ill executed,whatever it may be in theory must be in practicea bad government." now for his part, james wilsonwanted and advocated robustly for direct popularelection of the president. and in his mind, for goodreason, because in his view the presidencywas the sole locus in the entire politicalsystem, federal and local, where responsibility for thenation as a whole resided. as distinguishedfrom the parochial
interests of representatives forlocal congressional districts or senators fromindividual states. this was theodorewhite's point, as well. the president isthe sole actor who has the responsibilityin the constitution for the entirety ofthe nation, as opposed to particular districts. so james wilson's conceptionof the presidency, i'm going to callplebiscitarian.
and that word may havea little bit of currency as we go on this evening. that is he conceived ofit as an office which should be elected directlyby the entire citizenry. and therefore, directly beholdento the national at-large electorate, speaking in as muchof a unified voice as it could. but, of course, as weknow, that was not to be. instead we got the decidedlyodd and distinctly american apparatus of theelectoral college.
a mystery to allof us and if you don't believe whati just said, try explaining it to a foreigner. but just to look ahead fora moment, james wilson's aspiration for amore plebiscitarian style of presidency, wouldin the fullness of time get a kind of second wind. so some further numbers fromthat constitutional moment can serve to make avery important point.
article 1 of the constitutionaddresses the role of the legislative branch. it comprises 51 paragraphs. and it contains languageabout quote "powers denied to thegovernment" suggesting an elision in the framers'minds between government and legislature. article 2 addressesthe executive branch. it contains just 13paragraphs, eight of which
layout the mechanismfor electing the president, the electoralcollege, and four of which detail his powers, and oneprovides for his impeachment. now the asymmetry of thosenumbers 51 paragraphs devoted to the legislature andjust 13 to the executive strongly suggest that theframers conceive the president as largely the creatureof the legislature. to be sure, unlike in so-calledparliamentary systems where the prime minister isthe head of the majority
party in the legislature,our president was to be independentlyelected and would have a measure of autonomyand some power of initiative. but in practice, in theframers' minds, my belief, he would be substantiallysubordinated to the will and in fact, down to1832, a half century or so into therepublic's history, presidentialcandidates were chosen by congressional caucusesnot by party conventions.
now toward the end of the 19thcentury, roughly a century into american nationhood,several people began to question thecentrality of congress in our political system. and among them was ayoung graduate student at johns hopkins university. in 1885, he publishedhis doctoral dissertation under the titlecongressional government. and it remains, to this day, oneof the most trenchant treatises
ever written about americanpolitical institutions. now that bright younggraduate student was thomas woodrow wilson. he was, of course, destinedjust a few decades later to become presidentof the united states. wilson intended his titlecongressional government to be understood asironic or even oxymoronic. his central argument wasthat congress was inherently, structurallyincapable of anything
resembling coherent oreffective government. here's what he wrote. "nobody in thecongress, nobody stands sponsor for the policyof the government. a dozen men originateit, a dozen compromises twist and alter it,a dozen officers whose names are scarcelyknown out of washington put it into execution. policy can be neitherprompt nor straightforward
when it must serve many masters. it must either equivocate orhesitate or fail altogether. the division of authorityand the concealment of responsibility inour legislative branch are calculated to subjectthe government to a very distressing paralysis." now you have to pinchyourself to remember that those words werewritten not in 2016, but 131 years ago in 1885.
so wilson's wasbut one, an early, voice in a chorus ofsimilar commentary over the next few decadesaround the end of the 19th, beginning of the20th century, all lamenting the chronicdysfunctionality of congress and the fragmentationof political power. especially now that theunited states was on its way to becoming a big, matureindustrialized, urbanized, increasingly networkedand interdependent society
of nearly 100 million peoplewith the capacity to assert itself on a global scale. and as alexander hamiltonhad said 100 years earlier, "a feeble executive implying afeeble execution of government had become--" in the eyes ofthat generation a century ago-- "both an embarrassmentand a danger." so when he assumed thepresidency in 1913, wilson represented bothnewly emerging expectations about the president'srole and, i think,
a new style ofpresidential leadership. he once said, the presidentis at liberty in law and in conscience to be asbig a man as he possibly can. now that might have been moreaspirational than descriptive when he said it,but, in fact, along with his contemporary,theodore roosevelt, woodrow wilsonintroduced at least two significant innovations to theinstitution of the presidency. the first of those innovationsis evident in the fact
that with theodore rooseveltwe have the first publicized slogan, the squaredeal, that described a comprehensive, coherent policyprogram for which the president was to stand as champion. no such thing existedbefore the 20th century. but americans have long sincebecome accustomed to it. indeed, we've come to expectpresidentially sponsored policy packages, along withtheir headline slogans. from roosevelt's square dealto wilson's new freedom,
fdr's new deal, harry truman'sfair deal, john f. kennedy's new frontier, lyndon johnson'sgreat society, and today's or deal. you're paying attention. i'm gratified. ok. so that succession ofpresidential programs, in my judgment,bespeaks the felt need in modern americansociety-- more urgent
than it was 200 yearsago even-- for a type of coordinated, articulatednational policies for which the president, asthe singular solitary national political officer, canbe held accountable. but of course, as we know,while the president proposes, congress disposes. and it has many, manyavenues of disposal. and here is where the stubbornconstitutional realities and constraints of what ourcolleague here at stanford,
francis fukuyama, callsthe american veto-ocracy come frustrated into play. as the young woodrow wilsonobserved, over a century ago, congress to thisday largely remains the place wherepresidential policy initiatives go to die, or to bedisemboweled, or dismembered. now the second innovationwhose outlines at least we can see in the eraof roosevelt and wilson recalls thatplebiscitarian dream
of james wilson back in 1787. both tr and woodrowwilson began to develop a political techniquewhose significance would grow exponentially as the20th century went forward, namely using publicityas a tool of governance. and by publicity i meanreaching over and beyond the formal institutionsof government, congress in particular to appealdirectly to the public at large, and to mobilize publicopinion to advance
the presidential agenda. the $8 word for thisis disintermediation. and here is where themedia enter our story. it was the emergence ofinexpensive, mass circulation newspapers around theturn of the last century-- papers like williamrandolph hearst's new york journal and josephpulitzer's new york world that first made possiblethis kind of disintermediation. woodrow wilsonused those papers,
and others, the powerof the press in general, to appeal to the peopleto force congress to pass tariff bankingtrade and anti-trust legislation in his first term. and he tragically,as we all know, broke his health in an attemptto do the same with respect to passage of the treatyof versailles in 1919. now that shift in thepresident's relation with congress and the publichas, in fact, been precisely,
more or lessprecisely quantified. in the 20th century,presidents spoke directly to the public in one mediumor another six times more frequently than theyhad in the 19th century. and conversely, presidentsin the 20th century spoke exclusivelyto the congress 1/4 less frequently than inthe preceding century. so the emergence of masselectronic, instantaneous, communication,especially the radio,
powerfully acceleratedthat trend. and of course,franklin roosevelt with his renowned firesidechats fundamentally redefined the president'srelationship to the public. john f. kennedytook things a step further when he began televisingnews conferences, rendering the next morning'sprint accounts or even that evening newsbroadcasts pretty redundant. so the internet and thesocial media of our own time
take this processof disintermediation to its inevitable conclusion. they not only provide presidentsand presidential candidates with direct access tocitizens, but they also enable citizens to communicatedirectly and swiftly with leaders, or wouldbe leaders, and even more importantly, with eachother free from editorial curating or factchecking or even the protocols of civil speech.
so we live in a radicallydisintermediated world for better or worse. one more development withpowerful consequences in our own time,also with origins in the early 20thcentury, the proliferation of primary elections. the state of oregonheld the first delegate binding presidentialprimary in 1910. and california anda few other states
soon followed suit, in thename of direct democracy, taking politics out of the handsof the bosses, the machines, and delivering itdirectly to the people. now it's pretty hardto argue with the fact that-- or the assertionthat more democracy is better than less democracy. but the actual workingsof the primary system might prompt us to rethink thatapparently benign proposition. the fact is thatas late as 1968,
only about a dozen states heldbinding presidential primary elections. a decade or so later,virtually every state had a primary or, itsnear equivalent, a caucus. so here is yet anotherform of disintermediation. while the electronicsrevolution has severely reduced the influenceof the established press and other traditional media,in more or less the same time frame, the last two generationsor so primary elections
have enormously reduced thepower of political parties to perform their usual taskof identifying, vetting, recruiting, grooming, andsupporting candidates. now, in fact, anypolitical entrepreneur with a fat checkbook ora few fat cat supporters can seek to rent,or maybe i should say hijack, a party whichhelps explain in my mind why the republicanfield in the 2016 cycle had 17 contenders wellinto the campaigning
season, many of whomhad sufficient funding to hang on well beyond theirclear and evident sell bays date. so this is where historyhas deposited us. as americans, we havecome to have increasingly extravagant expectations, notonly that the president will protect us from eachothers' congressman, but that he or she will alsobe the paladin of coherent, nationally scaled policies,domestic and foreign,
responsive to the realitiesof the responsibilities of an advanced, interdigitated,post-industrial society of 322 million people. and we have come toexpect, and even demand, something thatamounts to personal, unmediated relationshipwith presidents and wannabe presidents, enquiring even intothe minutiae of their personal and most intimate lives. the media that once reportedand interpreted the news
have lost much of theirauthority and credibility, not to mention their audience. and the politicalparties that once did the work of selecting andbringing forward candidates have lost much oftheir power to control that process in the age ofnearly universal primary but remember, those other535 people in washington, dc. congress retains virtuallyall of its prerogatives to obstruct and to veto.
it continues to operate asa ramshackle confederation of local interests rather thana truly national institution. and the resultingstalemate between president and congresses we'veseen in recent history feeds public frustration,disillusionment, distrust, and resentment, and breedsthe political attitude we call populist. it is not a very pretty picture. now it happens that a recentbook by sanford's own terry moe
and his co-author william howellat the university of chicago, a book entitled relic. and because it'san academic book, it has the requisitecolon following that word. relic-- refers to theconstitution-- colon how our constitution undermineseffective government-- and why we need a morepowerful presidency. moe's and howell'sbook essentially resurrects much ofwoodrow wilson's lament
about congressionalinefficacy in 1885. and moe and howell have aremedy that they propose. and that is granting thepresident, across the board, fast track authoritywith respect to all legislation such ashe now enjoys with respect to trade negotiations. if that recommendationis adopted, presidentialinitiatives would have to be voted up or downwithout amendments or riders.
and in their view,this arrangement would better alignthe hopes invested in the presidencyand the realities of presidential leadershipby meaningfully attaching accountability topresidential promises, as alexander hamiltonand james wilson wanted. and, if it'sadopted, this reform would introduce moretransparency and efficiency to the legislative processas woodrow wilson wanted.
now whether this is a realistic,or even a sufficient, or even an appropriate solution tothe political paralysis that has been evidentrecently, i can't say. but any diagnosis of our currentsituation, i submit to you, must take accountof the mighty weight of constitutionalarchitecture, the technologies of communication, and the waysin which primary elections have weakened the political parties. and just to add anotherlayer of complexity,
the oceans of money on whichour electoral system now floats. all these things that havebrought this political system to its present pass. those will be among our subjectsthis evening, and in the weeks thank you. jim steyer: let's go. so boy, david, yougave us an awful lot to think about for tonightand for the weeks to come. that was awesome.
i want to start withthe media because mike is a press secretary anda brilliant communications specialist. david is a mediamessage person, but also having run some of themost important campaigns. how do you think first ofall compare hillary clinton and donald trump and theway they've used the media, number one. and then the follow up isthe behavior and performance
of the american media duringthe 2016 election cycle not that any of us haveopinions on that matter. but i'd love to hearwhat you both think about how the two campaignshave done it, how effectively in each case. mike mccurry: trump clearlyhas dominated campaign coverage and has expertlymanipulated the press by creating any manner ofscandal gaffe craziness on any given day.
and when that begins togenerate controversy, he just steps right upand does another one. and i think in doing that,he has kind of mesmerized the press to the point that theycan't not pay attention to him, because he's justso fascinating. and of course, theymissed his ascendancy, during the primary phase,and still can't figure out how he's hangingon despite what, i think is the first time inmy lifetime, where collectively
an editorial judgmenthas been made that he is acandidate that ought not to be elected president. i mean there wereplenty of times when editorial boards takethat kind of position, but this has seeped innow to the actual coverage of the campaign itself. so they have kindof deliberately attempted to expose what theythink as his shortcomings
as a candidate. and it's truly extraordinary. now, mrs. clinton--and so as a result, he's had i think-- i meandavid would know too, the number, the quantityof coverage that he's had is almost three orfour times as much as what mrs.clinton has received during the sameequivalent period of time. now that's changing now thatwe're in the general election
phase. but during the early stage ofthis very, very long campaign, he was reallydominating the coverage. she was morestrategic and precise in choosing momentsin which she wanted to elevate her own profile. and i think used that inthe more conventional way. so you've got really tworadically different ways of which you engage withthe media and two radically
different viewsin the large thing that we call the media abouthow the candidates ought to be portrayed. now it's very hardto give the media any kind of gradein this, because one of the factors now inpolitical communications is just how diverse the mediais, the ways in which we get content. there is the declinein what we would
call the traditionalmainstream press, the decline in the large big city newspapersand their circulation, the decline in thetraditional major networks that americans have historicallyrelied upon to get information about the campaigns. that is alldisaggregating now as we see contentssplattered across all that is the socialmedia and the internet. so you know it it's hard to kindof come up with a single grade,
because the mediaitself is undergoing such rapid change by technologyand by editorial standards. do see it that way? jim steyer: what doyou think, david? david plouffe: well ido think that there has been some false equivalency. i think that some of thecoverage of trump and clinton on financial issues,foundation issues, transparency, i don'tthink it's equal.
but just as aformer practitioner, tom hanks famously saidthere's no crying in baseball. there's no crying inpresidential politics. if you want to seekthe presidency, you've got to win it nomatter whether you think you're getting goodmedia coverage or not and execute acampaign to do that. and i think-- i'm suremike will attest to this-- is what generally happensis when you're perceived
to be doing well by the media,whether that's in office or in a campaign, you tendto like your coverage. donald trump doesn'tlike all the coverage he's getting in the last week. ok? in september, heliked the coverage. so there is a group thinkthat happens there, right? so basically, the packjournalism is a real thing. and basically people pile on.
and so right nowthe race is covered in a way that's much morefavorable to hillary clinton. if she does not havea good debate sunday, she'll be back inthe penalty box. but i agree with mike. the big factor is thepresidential megaphone that we always usedto talk about has been completely shattered andin a presidential campaign. and you have to understand, too,that most of the-- right now
what really mattersin this election are their swing voters inabout four to six states? that will be pretty important. and then there's alot of voters who would support trump orclinton but not sure they're going to vote. they are definitelynot watching-- i mean, let's remember evenbill o'reilly only gets three, four millionpeople a night.
it's a sliver of the country. so the most importantconversation that's happeningevery day is the one that we're all having with eachother in person or on facebook. and the media caninfluence that. mike mccurry: thinkingof david's point about tr and wilsonreally beginning to frame a largepublic discussion through the use of media,the broadsheet newspaper,
basically, andthen, later, radio. that fragmentationof the media now has made it almostimpossible for either of these majorcandidates to put forward any type of coherentprogram that would lead to somegoverning agenda when we get to january of 2017. i mean frankly you can nametrump's ideas more readily, but they are implausible.
we're not going to builda wall all the way down across our border in the south. i mean that's nutty. and some of his other ideas kindof approach that standard, too. but the point is he's talkingto slivers of audiences very directly. and david can tell you alot about how campaigns use creatively themicro-targeted ability of the internet to individuallyto deliver reinforcing messages
to the voter. but it doesn't addup then at the end to anything that represents likean agenda for the common good. so that's my worry-- david kennedy: analogously,slivers of the electorate participate in primaries. mike mccurry: right. jim steyer: so let me ask acouple of follow ups, here. so one, on the issue ofmicro-targeting, david.
so you, and theelectoral college, because david was talking inhis opening about the electoral college. if you take a look athillary's campaign right now, you have joel, our good paljoel benenson who's been here. who was your colleagueas the pollster for obama both times, nowhillary's pollster. jim margolis has beenhere making the ads. they've got a much moretraditional campaign, right?
trump has had thisunique, bizarre campaign. how would you valuethe effect of-- really talk about the generalnow, because trump clearly was masterful in somelevel with the media and getting therepublican nomination. but now that you'rein the general, hillary's done a muchmore conventional. how does that work? and how would yourate him in a sense?
david plouffe: wellfirst of all i'd say, yes, trump did somesmart things in the primary. but he did not create theconditions for his rise, he tapped into it. so as it turned out,it was considered such a deep republican field. it turned out there werea bunch of major leaguers, but they're all sitting onthe bench pinch hitting. none of these people arein the all-star game.
so about 60% of therepublican electorate wanted nothing to do withtraditional republican politicians. so there's a lot of talkabout campaign tactics. we've got to remember inpresidential campaigns, it's about the two people andthe environment that they're running in and the timing. so listen, everycampaign's different. this campaign, and i thinkclinton's 100% going to win it,
and i think she maywant to by some margin, it's not going to bein the hall of fame of great political victories. this is a very muddy track,to use a horse racing analogy. and their job is to get 270electoral votes, because that's the system we have. and i think they're focused onthat every minute of every day and every decision they make. and it's one of thereasons i think even when
the race was supposedly gettingcloser, according to the media figure skating judges-- jim steyer: david refersto people as bedwetters. david plouffe: --itwasn't really that close. but so let's talkabout trump's mastery. he got the nomination. but he's probably destinedto get 43 or 44% of the vote, in what was clearlya winnable race against a democraticcandidate, who
was far weaker than i imagined. so let's not throw rose petalsin front of donald trump, yet, because i thinkhe's destined to lose. so the clintoncampaign's been solid. i do think electoral collegepoint is interesting. my bias, is i'm sure mostpeople here is, is we should go to direct election. but having runpresidential campaigns, if i was in chargeof a campaign where
we didn't have theelectoral college, i would live in houston, losangeles, new york, miami, chicago. you'd never see me in smalltown iowa or small town ohio. so it seems right tome, but i'm not sure that that would be agood thing, because i think the republicanwould do the same thing. they would live inplaces where they could harvest republican votes.
so it's the system we have. but i think they knew howhard this was going to be, after eight years of a democrat. there's a lot ofpeople out there looking for something else. it is a change electionof some extent. she is not changeby any definition. she is not a political athlete. i think she actually may bean athlete when she governs,
but she's openly said this,this is not her strength. but they've run a very,very smart campaign that's driven on data,a great understanding of the americanelectorate, and preserving as many pathways as possibleto 270 electoral votes. now this may open up for herand she may get close to 350. so in that case, the campaignstuff just added to her margin. it wasn't the reason she won. the way a smartcampaign can make
a difference is if it'sreally, really close, the way we always thought aboutit, it was our field goal unit. if we were really close, allthe organizing that many of you did, the smart data, themessaging, the understanding the electorate, smartelectoral college strategy, that could get us over the top. in this case, ithink we're probably talking about a margin, whichis not unimportant in terms of governing.
rob reich: i want tocome back to the point about disintermediatedmedia landscape. and david, you mentionedthat even bill o'reilly only has three million viewers. so what was the viewership forthe first presidential debate between hillaryand donald trump? mike mccurry: well, 87million measured by nielsen. and that was just throughconventional television. that excluded c-span.
it excluded people whowere live streaming, so it probably was muchcloser to 100 million. and that ishistorically the highest we've had in thepresidential debates. rob reich: right. so. it seems to meplausible to suggest that the debates, as a result ofthis fractured media landscape, represent one ofthe few remaining
opportunities for thecandidates themselves to deliver a message toa genuinely broad public. and yet, conventionalwisdom about the debates is that they actually don'tplay all that significant a role in campaign strategyor in messaging. so i mean i'm thinkingback four years, to i guess whatyour role must have been david after thefirst debate between obama and romney.
david plouffe: youhad to go there, huh? rob reich: yeah. jim steyer: great momentin your career, david. rob reich: and mike, i'mthinking about the role that you're playing now as aco-chair of the presidential debate commission. i'm wondering how each of youwould referee the significance of presidential debates inlight of the fractured media landscape and thisrare opportunity
to communicate toa broad public, even if it's not a grand agenda. there is this rareopportunity still. mike mccurry: wellthey really are the rare moments duringthe general election campaign that we all gatheraround a common campfire and hear a story told aboutthe future of the country, and where we aregoing to go, and then see the different narratives--
david kennedy: that'swhat we should have. jim steyer: that'swhat i'm trying to say. we should hear that. mike mccurry: wellwe should hear that. but the problem is with, thisvery polarized electorate, and with two candidates whomore than half of the electorate say they don't particularlylike, it comes down to what can you do to more heavilyengage your core support. and so i felt thisthe other night,
particularly, at thevice presidential debate. i felt like the conversationwas being held only with the people whowere out there who need to hear a reinforcementof their strong points of view. now you are correct froma lot of the research that has been done, thesedebates are not designed and nor do theyconvince people to vote for one candidate or another. the number of peoplewho are truly undecided,
even now probably, isrelatively small in percent. but they do givepeople stronger reasons to be advocates for thecandidate that they support. and they do, ifthey are done well, i mean i would maybeargue that we haven't seen that in the fir-- we didn'tsee that in the first debate-- they are used to build abroad consensus around what the agenda should befor that campaign, and for that candidate, ifthat candidate is selected.
now that's the bestuse of those debates. and whether we will see moreof that kind of conversation on sunday night and then inthe last debate in las vegas, we'll see. we've designed it, andtried to design it, so that it gets away fromthe pugilistic way in which the candidates often engage. because we were trying to createbigger chunks of time in which the candidates could be morethoughtful and reflective
around certain issues. that's why we went tothe blocks of 15 minutes for each segment in the debate. now it didn't workout particularly well. when the candidates liketo interrupt each other and talk over eachother and really want to get into it, because theyare trying to reach those core supporters and motivatethose core supporters, then we lose thatopportunity to really
have something thatbuilds consensus. rob reich: david, what doyou think about the question? david plouffe: well. so i'd say first of all theaudience, so 87 million. if you think aboutthe number of people who watched the debatein groups and you think aboutsmartphones, i actually think it was closer to 110. so maybe 140 millionpeople are going to vote?
think about that. what an opportunity. and by the way i thinkthat's one of the maybe few very healthy thingsabout our democracy is presidential debatesstill matter, now unlike senate debates orcongressional debates. now they're not going tocompletely change a race, i agree with that. but let's look historically, ok?
hillary clinton had a lead. she needed to do two things. and i know from research in both'08 and '12, there still was a healthy chunk of undecidedvoters that put debates at the number one reason thatthey would make a decision. we had less concern aboutmotivating our supporters, but that was part ofwhat we needed to do. but so she comes out of thatdebate strengthening her lead, and i think making democratsfeel a little bit more
excited about her. she's got more work to do,2012 after our first debate with romney, we gotput on probation. we still had a lead,but we let him back in the race fora period of time. 2004 george bush led johnkerry back in the race. the first debatein 2000 guaranteed george w. bush's election,masterful debate performance. it wasn't just that gore wasthree different gores inside,
he was very goodin those debates. i've had to watch everypresidential debate probably four times, as we preparefor these things, very good. our first debate againstjohn mccain, very important we one a foreign policydebate, this four years out of the illinoisstate legislature. bill clinton's first debate in'92, they're always important. they don't change arace 10 or 15 points. they're incredibly important tothe biggest audience you have.
we certainly took themenormously seriously. and so you think aboutwhat the candidates need to do on sunday. and to me, that is by farthe most interesting debate, because it's a town hall debate. the candidates arestill-- i mean listen. donald trump doesn't think thisis the lincoln-douglas debate. this is like mad max fury road. i mean we're not goingto get what we all
want in terms of here's mypolicy in my first 100 days. she's just got todeal with that. but you do have actualcitizens asking the questions. the candidateswill still tangle. moderator still has her role. but we always thoughtthat that was the hardest debate to prepare for. because citizens--you can fairly predict the questionsjournalists are going to ask--
but citizens you're not sure. and you're not sure how they'regoing to come at a question. and obviously, there'sa retail politician. you've got that massive audienceat home you have to be careful. but you also want to connect. and neither trump or clintonare natural retail politicians so this is an awaygame for both of them. but these things are all apiece, these three debates. the first one'sthe most important.
so what does clintonneed to do more of? she needs to be, in myview, more heart less head. it's pretty clear whattrump needs to do. and you know, if hebrought for 90 minutes on sunday night the first10 minutes of the debate, you know, i thinkmost of his supporters anyway would think hebounced back a little bit. but this isincredibly important. and for someone likehillary clinton who
does have, i wouldconsider it, close to a crisis oflack of enthusiasm particularly amongstyoung voters, it's the best opportunity shehas for those people to say, you know i wasn't sure abouther, but i saw something there. that's what we need. because the campaign,the technology, the data, the spending, that's notgoing to solve that problem, only she can solve that problem.
mike mccurry: you know there'sone other important thing. and picking up on a pointthat you made in the opening lecture. these debates are alsoabout establishing a personal relationship betweenthe president and the people. unlike, of the 536elected officials, the one that we reallyengage with personally who comes into our living rooms ontelevision, and who is with us, and who we get toknow and we get
to know their family andthe names of their pets, and all the other things thatwe study about the president. we don't have royalty,we have a first family. that's what thesedebates also do because you get thatpersonal measure of what the character of the person is. and i mean that dimension ofthese i think is fascinating. and we've seen someof that playing out as we watched the first debate.
jim steyer: and youknow, david, to the point you made earlier todavid kennedy's point that mike was justpicking up on there. the thing-- no, nopretenses about my viewpoint on this-- the thing thatamazes me about trump is this. is that i do think thatpeople look and go-- i think you said itearlier today when we were talking-- youknow this is the guy who's going to be on mycell phone and who
i'm going to have todeal with in the oval office for the next eight years. this person, woman,it's not this guy now, it could be thisman or this woman. and with a guy whohas-- i'm thinking this as a dad-- bullying, lying, rolemodel behavior that margolis made the ads about thekids just watching trump, just say what he said. don't you believe thatthese debates, also
with rosie o'donnelland the alicia machado moments just show to abroad swath of the public that mike's earlier point aboutthe editorial boards coming out unanimously saying,this guy's not. and can you see him possiblyturning that around, that issue around? and no matter how well he doeswith anderson cooper and martha raddatz on monday night. david plouffe: welli'd say my friend
and former colleague,david axelrod, had a great term abouta presidential campaign. it's an mri for the soul. you can't hide who you are. so the truth isif trump shows up in a sort of a sedatedof friendly way, that won't help him that mucheither, because inauthenticity is kryptonite to politicians. so i think that--the other i'd say
about preparingfor these debates, so people like meare involved in it, you have electoralgames, and you're trying to game outthe debate, and you're trying to create somemoments and just have a strong performance. these are human beings. so you don't knowwhat's going to happen when the bell goes off.
you just don't know. and that's why i think thereare so many people who-- yes it's important. and the american peopletake this election very, both personally,and it's important. but there's alsosome drama here. because you just don'tknow what you'll see. like barack obamadid not practice well before the first debate.
we did not prepare him well. but what we saw in denver was50 times worse than anything we saw. despite the fact that weknew every president loses their first debate, closeelection, tough economy, don't blow it. it was on all of us. so he just decided hewanted to defend his record. that's what we weregoing to do that night
and not make a positive case. george bush did thesame thing in 2004. donald trump knew-- now theinteresting thing to me, because no one-- we can argue--i don't think very many people think debates areseismic shifters, but we know it's important. the fact that he didnot prepare is the thing that is so unbelievable to me. because even donaldtrump knows the stakes.
and clearly, i mean whathappens normally tonight is the first night ofyour first mock debate. the way we would doit is we would go to debate camp for four days. and you take it asserious as anything you've done in your life. you know, donaldtrump supposedly is practicing some answersand they're filming it. but he's not going to gothrough the whole exercise.
and that's what's amazing tome, because there's nothing more important in the world, andfor the world than the election of a us president. and here we have a majorparty nominee who's not putting in the preparation. and i thought thatclinton line about you're right i've preparedfor the debate, but i'd prepare forthe presidency in some of the focus groupresearch i saw was one
of the most effective lines. david kennedy: but if we'reall agreed, as we seem to be, as you made the point initially,that these elections are the one really dramaticallyplebiscitarian element in our currentpolitical culture. 2/3 of the electoratewitnessed that last debate buy your figures. and you said they'redesigned to do a certain job. i think you'd be thefirst to admit it,
i think you did concede there'sbeen some design failure. you said they'renot seismic events. what if we tried tochange the richter scale reading on the debate, madethem more substantive, less cosmetic, less person toperson, more about policy and the future, and so on. are there any design principlesthat have been thought about or suggested? mike mccurry: well i mentionedthe one that was critical
four years agowas is to get away from these veryrigid, formulaic ways. you get two minutes. you get a 30 seconds to respond. you get 90 seconds. we've moved away from that. and the concept was moderatorsboth announcing the topics in advance, which we sort ofgot some of from lester holt. but then these largerperiods of time
where there would be seriousand substantive discussion. now the debate formatis only part of it. it's the moderator who has toshow up and ask good questions. and i think lester holt did. but the candidateshave to show up wanting to have thatkind of conversation. and they didn't. so that's what we end up with. we end up with a food fight.
and you know i don't know. i mean, i thinkmaybe part of-- i think trump will be verydifferent on sunday night, just because-- well first ofall, the sunday night debate is the one in whichreal citizens-- there will be 40 of them on stage. they have been randomly pickedby the gallup organization as uncommitted voters. not necessarilyundecided, but they
are open to changing their mind. that's the screen that thegallup organization uses. david kennedy: doesthat mean none of them is a registereddemocrat or republican? mike mccurry: they willget a mix of republicans, independents,democrats, and probably some who will not state whattheir party affiliation is. the critical variable isthat they have to first, they have to begenuinely uncommitted.
and they have to showup with questions. and they each submittwo questions in a pool that they would then use. and then from thelarger pool of the 40 are selected who willactually be on stage. but this is going to be-- ifit is about how do you develop a personal relationship. and you'll remember my formerboss, bill clinton, and how effective he was at that.
because he justoozed empathy when he was in thatenvironment, and felt the pain of the people whowere asking the questions, and enveloped them. and george bush did not. he was looking at clinton, whenis this thing going to be done? so i have a hard timepicture-- imagining what trump will be likein that environment having to really coax someone, havingto deliver himself, and coax
a real personalrelationship from someone. i just don't know hisability to do that. mrs. clinton hashad some experience in that kind of format. and i think will try harder. but she's not, as you say,naturally gifted at those arts. so we'll see. and then we havethe third debate. we'll go back and have the sameformat as the first debate.
so i don't know. i don't know, david. is there a betterway to do this? or are theredifferent techniques that we could use totry to have a more reasonable, substantiveconversation that would bring greaterhealth to our democracy? i would love ideas. my email address is well known.
and steyer will give it to you. david plouffe:let me just quick. i will say this. so i think, go back andwatch all the debates from kennedy, nixon, andforward, even the six that i was mostrecently involved with. there were very substantive,lengthy segments, obama-romney, obama-mccain, so i thinklet's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
this is a unique. i mean look at the republicanprimary debates how big are your hands and other bodyparts and little marco, and i mean-- so thisis just we're dealing with a unique individual. i do think that's wherehe's going to take it. moderator can do all they can. i do think what wouldbe useful though is, having prepared for these, ido think for the moderators
to think through, letme not the whole debate, but let me find two or threequestions they probably haven't prepared for, andsome more far reaching things. you know, i'd love to hearboth these candidates say how are you going to makepolicy decisions given what's happening in terms of machinelearning and automation and virtual andaugmented reality? the nature of warfareis clearly going to change as othercountries may get drones
and as we have moreautomated soldiers. how are you goingto handle that? i would love to hear boththese candidates think about that sort of thing. mike mccurry: you know there'sone point i should have made, should have said this earlierbecause it's picking up a little bit on theinstitutions that impact the presidency itself. from 1960, you mentionedthe nixon-kennedy debate
we went 16 yearsuntil 1976 until we had the next presidentialdebate, because sometimes, particularlyincumbent presidents, don't particularly feelit's in their interest to have to get on the stagewith someone who thinks they're equal to them after they've beenexercising this enormous power. witness denver four years ago. so the fact that thecommission on presidential debates, and we getcriticized, we particularly
get criticized bythird parties that feel like they aredenied access because we set a threshold of15% for participation. and there are goodreasons to do that. we'd otherwise havea cluttered stage. and probably, andyou and i both know having been onthe campaign side, you wouldn't want yourcandidate to get up there with six or seven peoplein the general election,
unless it was politicallymaybe in your interests. but the fact that we'veinstitutionalized these moments now, where we get to see thecandidates as human beings in these moments in which somelight gets shed on character is an important thingfor our process. because so much ofthe rest of campaign theater is just manufactured. and the events are staged. and you don't getthose authentic moments
when you see someone clearly. jim steyer: i want to askyou one question, mike, as chair of the debates. and david, comment,too, when you'd like to. so you mention the third debate. and chris wallace said he'snot going to be a fact checker or care about whetherthey're accurate or not. so i find that to be a patheticand outrageous statement for a journalist to make.
i do. so you could agree or disagree-- but my bigger question is this. given the nature-- i thinkthis is important in anything-- but given that these arethese very key moments, one way or another, and given thelevel of outright mendacity and just dishoneststatements that have been made bothin the and primaries and now in the general,and in my opinion largely
by one person and there'sbeen a false equivalency. how can we have a debatewhere the moderators aren't held accountable tosome extent but you guys, that actually when peopleget up and lie, do something, say something about it? mike mccurry: jim, if thereis rampant proliferation and prevarication-- --then, yes the moderatorhas to step in at some point. but remember whathappens when they do.
if you remember thedebate four years ago when candy crowleyfrom cnn, they were back and forth,back and forth between-- david plouffe: in the townhall debate, by the way, benghazi was duringthe town hall debate. mike mccurry: yeah, wellthey were back and forth on whether or not the presidenthad used the word terror. and she happened to have been atthe rose garden ceremony, where he did use the word terror.
and so she blurted out,well, yeah, he did say it. she told me later, she goesi was there when he said it. so i knew. and they were going back andforth and they were stuck and i needed to move it on. but she wasexcoriated for having intervened somehowor other on behalf of one of the candidates. and if you were fact checking,there is some evidence
that in this current campaign,one of the candidates would be subject to a littlemore of that than the other. so and then everyrepublican would howl and every conservative wouldsay the thing was stacked. and we even got, as it was, somecriticism in the first debate that somehow or otherholt had asked questions that were a little sharper andmore pointed of donald trump. but chris wallace'spoint is i'm not there to kind of act like i'ma sunday talk show host
and go down the checklist andbuzz both of these candidates. that's their job. they have tochallenge each other. i mean that's whatsenator kaine was doing to governor pencejust the other night in the vice presidential debate. and maybe not very effectively,according to the reviews, but pence elected not todefend some of the statements that his running mate had made.
and that was a telling moment. i mean that was politicallythe most interesting thing that came out of thatwhole debate, i think. rob reich: i want to pushthe conversation a little bit beyond the considerations aboutthe debates and the broader campaign and getinto the conversation here with a few of thequestions that were posed to us by some of the students. so david, you were partof an historic candidate,
the first african-americanas and initial candidate for a party and thenelected, of course. hillary clinton is,in many respects, equally historic asthe first female. but that's overlooked itseems or underplayed insofar as this campaign's going. i wanted to know ifyou could comment on why you think that is. and to focus thequestion a bit more,
why do you think that evenamongst college educated white students, inparticular women themselves, hillary clinton's historiccandidacy as a woman is not playing especially well? they went by and largefor bernie sanders. and now, you don't seethe same sort of energy that you saw on behalfof barack obama? david plouffe: well,on the last point. so hillary clintonnow is doing better
than barack obamadid with college educated white men, younger. now we did quite well. and her vote share amongstcollege educated women from the ages of 23-50is going to exceed ours. now the question isvote share is one thing, how much turnout did you get? that's a challenge. and there's no doubt in theprimary there were some issues.
but i would saythat i would love for her to have a debate moment,whether it's sunday night or in las vegas-- fittingplace, by the way, to end this circus--inspired choice of locale by the commission. but i would love her-- mike mccurry: my co-chairhappens to be from nevada. but-- david plouffe: yeah.
whether that questioncomes directly, i mean i'd love for her tohave a moment to lift this up a little bit and saylisten i don't want people to cast their votefor or against based on either of our genders. but i do think after 227 years,and 44 presidencies, and 43 presidents, the fact thatwe'd have our first president sitting at the oval office andin the situation room looking at the world through the eyesof a mother and a grandmother
and a wife is going to be a verygood thing for this country. and i think something like thatcould really bring it home. because i don't think she'sgetting-- i mean i was struck, i was in philadelphia. i was back at the convention. and when she strode up to thestage on a thursday night, i got quite emotional. that was the first time for me. i mean i knew our first woman,excited, but there it was.
it meant something. i actually happen to believesubstantively that's true. i mean i think we've tried42 white dudes and one african-american, andwe've never tried a woman. i think maybe there'll be somegood that comes out of that. but i think the perspective'san important selling point. but i think politicallyshe's probably not getting the value out of the history. rob reich: so thinkingstrategically,
you suggest you'd like to seeher have a moment in which she lifts this issue up without-- david plouffe: in stride. rob reich: you'reright, in stride. david plouffe: not going, i'llget to benghazi in a minute. but you know-- rob reich: is it too late forher to make a big difference in this? mike mccurry: no
david plouffe: no. you know the onlypenalty of the lateness is it's getting latefor voter registration deadlines in many states. but no, it's not. and again, where therace stands right now is i think if wereheld tomorrow, you know she probably winsfour to six points nationally, which probably results innorth of 320 electoral votes.
so she's in acommanding position. now there's no questionthat her husband, in 1992, or barack obama in 2008would be winning by more. they were very different. or ronald reagan, or evengeorge w. bush back in 2000. so there's some limitation. and there's no doubther unfavorables and some of these trust numbersare much worse than anybody could have predicted.
so she's challenging. but she's got, in my view,an incredibly decisive edge. and the important thing, whetherit's the debate this sunday, the next one, the rest of thecampaign, trump's got to grow. so i was in new york, i wasasked by the clinton campaign to come out and spend sometime with the media afterwards. and all of them, well istrump going to lose any vote? no, he's not going to lose asingle vote because of this. but that's not his mission.
he has to add a ton of vote. and he didn't add anybodybecause that debate performance. and so that's wherethe race stands, right? but for her-- so i think she'salmost assuredly going to win. but to win with the margin whichwill help take back the senate, give her more strength--you know, if she wins, and turnout really is abysmal,that's going to affect. so it's not too late.
but the window's closing. she's got two more opportunitiesbecause outside the debates, that target audience isnot watching cnn or msnbc. they're just notgoing to see it. they're hard to reachwith advertising. this is it. she's got to swing atthe pitch and hit it. david kennedy: youknow, rob, i would also say-- this is quiteimpressionistic
and i'm sticking my neckout even to say it probably, but-- i think the issues ofracial equality and gender equality have different valencesin our culture and our history. i think a lot of the enthusiasmfor barack obama in 2008 wasn't just in theafrican-american community. it was in the broadercommunity that saw an opportunity toexculpate the society from its history of racism. it was a kind of expiationexercise in part.
the issue of genderequality is urgent and real. and i don't wantto belittle it all, but it just doesn't havethe same roots and valence in our national historythat racial equality does. so it's less mobilizable ithink as a political factor. rob reich: i think that's aninteresting question that i put to mike and david here. if you happen to think thatsome of what we observe in our current moment and whatyou experienced as the campaign
strategist for barackobama involved confronting what was still, presentracism in the country, whether or not it's the sametype of issue with respect to gender or sexism, i wonderif you might comment on whether you think someof the lack of enthusiasm we see for hillary clinton'shistoric candidacy amounts to something about latentsexism or explicit sexism in the american population? mike mccurry: i thinksome of it could.
but i think it's a very,very small fraction of the electorate. i think the strongerproblem that she has is the one of enthusiasmfor not having that natural gift of, the naturalpolitical skill that comes with building enthusiasmand creating that relationship of trust with people. plus things that she'sdone along the way that have tripped her up.
there have been someepisodes where she's got some challenges on that front. and i think that hasa lot to do with it. but what percentageof the pro-trump vote is openly hostile to theidea of a female presidency, i don't know? i'm hoping that that'sa very small number. i don't know, what do you think? rob reich: david?
audience: no. david plouffe: well i think-- yeah. i don't think they'revoting differently, because i thinkthe level of animus though among some of thetrump supporters probably is. in terms of the people whoare at risk of not voting, i don't mean it's becauseof gender, i think it's because of enthusiasm.
and again, i think thoseare some voters where it's a clearerpicture in their mind that there is somehistory to be made here. i do think that will help. mike mccurry: imean in this sense, it does seem like what animatesa lot of the trump vote are people whobelieve that there is a country thatis slipping away from them that is long gone.
that it was a better countryin the 1950s and '60s. now that was a countryin which women did not have the opportunitiesthat they have today. so in some sense, maybethat's gets at what your question was there. but you know thereis something we have got to acknowledge this. now, obviously, weare two democrats, but i have to acknowledgethat because the country--
we have gone the longestsustained period in which pollsters have measureddissatisfaction with the directionof the country. the classic pollingquestion is the country headed in the right directionor is it on the wrong track? we have been on the wrongtrack, 2/3 of the country saying we're on the wrong track forthe longest period of time that pollsters haveasked that question. almost throughout all of theobama presidency in fact.
now obama's popularityhas risen a little bit, but it never gets much-- itsort of fluctuates in the range of 55%-45% approval. so that's a lotof people who just don't approve of the president. and that reflects, i thinkthe larger polarization that we have inthe country, too. but trump has tapped into thatand has tapped into the desire to change direction.
and even though i thinkmaybe a large percentage of his supporters thinkhe's got his problems, they're willing to lookbeyond that because they're and i think that ismrs. clinton's problem is that she represents thatestablished way of doing things, going way back, becauseshe's been around forever. david kennedy: i thinkshe's got another problem. and frankly, in your viewson this, david, especially. it's a problem, a version ofwhich president obama's had
as well by his ownadmission, and that's the difficulty ofcommunicating a coherent vision of the kind of futurethey want to lead us into. hillary's greatestasset, at this point, seems to be in the electoralprocess is making the case that she is the personwho is not donald trump. but she hasn't reallymade the positive case, very effectively,in my view for what is the integument,the ligaments that
hold her vision ofthe world together. i think barack obama's hada similar issue, actually. david plouffe: well ithink not in our campaigns. and you know, it's amazingwhat a billion dollars will do to your communicationsskills and millions of volunteers, particular whenthe presidential megaphone has been shattered. and listen, youhave to understand about the presidency, imean mike worked there.
i worked there. what scares me abouttrump is not his policies it's that-- i mean it'sthe privilege of a lifetime to work there. it's also a house of horrors. anything thatcomes to that floor is generally no good, andsuper complicated, and urgent, and crisis. and so to your point,they're the one person
in our system ofgovernment who's got to be responsiblefor everything. so this isn't just aboutnarrating your presidency. you're managing crisis,economic foreign policy. it's an amazing thing. and i can't imaginethat human being in the situation room runningthe national security council meeting. it scares me to death, to death.
the other thing i think itwould be good for her to do is to make clear-- i meanshe did a little bit of this in the first debate--but this is also a way to sort ofsay not everything was great during thelast eight years. say, listen, trump wantsto adopt the same policies, actually, on steroids-- don'tdo the trumped up line she did-- you know that wreckedthe economy and all the resultant things.
now that's what he wants to do. so if you want to go backto that, vote for him. economy's bounced back. we've created over 10 millionjobs, unemployment rate down. but we haven't seen is the wagegrowth in a consistent way, too many people trying to get inthe middle class, can't do it. that's going to be themission of my presidency. every day i wake up, every thingi do, every idea i have, right? i think she needs to do that.
and that's moreagain, that's less about i think she should talkabout what she's going to do, but it's more thatsense of advocacy. and it's also a way to say,in the last eight years, we haven't seen theeconomy work as well we need it for everybody. now it could be onthe wrong track, i mean, i'm not sure that'sthe right measure anymore. because you ask peopledifferent questions
about their personal economicsituation, quite positive, do they think america ismore respected in the world? and now listen, idon't think we're going to see-- i mean barackobama's going to leave office, my guess his approvalratings in the high 50s, which is extraordinarily high. but we're not going to seeany president, republican or democrat, other than maybe inthe month after military action be in the 70s, 80s,or 90s, ever again.
because we've gotto remember, too, so trump-- in livingout in the bay area and having worked indemocratic politics now, it's always an interestingdiscussion, because people think if we just speak inpurely progressive language, we can win the presidency. 20% of the american electoratethis year will be liberal. 40% will be conservative. the republican party is alwayscloser to the presidency
than the democratic party is. so he or she who wins themiddle wins the election. we have to remember that. and at some point,the republicans are going tonominate someone who can appeal more to the center. and we'll nominatesomeone, because i think our party will movefurther and further left, that can't hold the center.
it's a very importantthing to understand how hard it is for--even with our electoral college and demographicadvantages-- 40% of the electorateis conservative. and even though trump'snot a true conservative, he's going to get all that vote. so they are prettyclose to the presidency before you evenstart the campaign. rob reich: i want to get onemore question from a student,
here. and you mentioned thisliving now in silicon valley, this is a siliconvalley centric question. we've long known livingin silicon valley and in the bay area howwe're a fund raising machine for various candidates. but in part because of someof the technological means, the platforms that are availablefor disseminating messages, and micro targeting, it'sobvious that silicon valley
companies and what comes outof silicon valley are much more important for campaignstrategy these days beyond the dollarsthat can be donated. and it seems likelythat this is-- and we're in an early momentof the evolution of this, it's hardly been built out. so now that you'reliving here, david, i wonder if you can comment a biton what you see as the coming attractions withrespect to the role
that silicon valley playswith respect to elections in the united states. and whether you thinkit's a good development that technology andthe platforms that are built and operatedhere are increasingly central players in that. david plouffe: well i thinksilicon valley, obviously, has an enormous rolein our government and our policy,most importantly.
but speaking specificallyof campaigns, first of all there's talent. so our analytics, ourdata, our digital strategy, in '08 and '12,clinton's in '16. do you think anybodyfrom campaign politics was involved in that? no. it's people fromcompanies out here taking a sabbatical who come.
and that's one of the problemsof the republican party right now, because onsocial issues, there's plenty of people out here whomight agree with republicans on economic issues,there's not many people that agree with themon social issues. they're not willingto go to trump tower or down to help ted cruz in '20. so there's a talent gapbetween the parties. i shouldn't say the parties.
because these talent, they'renot going to help the party, they're going tohelp a candidate. but the big changes aregoing to be machine learning. so i even think aboutstuff i've done in my life. should barack obamago to miami or tampa? should we run thisad or that ad? by 2024, for maybe 2020, watsonwill make that decision, not someone like me. secondly, augmentedreality, virtual reality.
that's going toopen up the ability to engage people infascinating ways in politics. and you think aboutthe ability to have basically a life-likecandidate with machine learning engaging with the voter. i mean prime ministermodi used holograms, but that was a veryrudimentary use of that. i think that's fascinating. and then, i think,hopefully, silicon valley
will be part of makingit easier to vote. because the fact of the matterthat we can order a car, stay wherever we want, dofinancial transactions, fill prescriptions, getdiagnosed, buy cars, but we can't press a buttonand vote is an outrage. and i think it would bethe single best thing to help turn out andhelp the country. rob reich: so thatlast thing, increasing the ease with which we canvote seems unambiguously
a good development. david plouffe: wellin the some quarters. rob reich: true. david plouffe: notin other quarters. that's why the lastthing we're going to be able to do in thiscountry is vote on our phones or with our retinalscans or whatever it's going to be in a few years. it will be the very last thing,because there is no doubt.
now if i was a republicanstrategist that's kind of how i feel about theold taxi industry a few years ago back when that wasan issue-- compete. because if you're sayingan african-american voter, an asian-american voter,an unmarried, younger, white collegeeducated voter, young, we're not sure youthink-- so if you're saying we don't think youparticipating is a good idea, you're never goingto get to first base.
so at some point you've gotto tackle the big thing, even if you lose a coupleelections along the way. jim steyer: cani ask a follow up about this-- itgoes to the other. you brought up genderand young people. but the other issue thatto me has really come out in this campaign is race. and it's interesting becauseyou ran two campaigns with the first african-americancandidate for president.
and you obviouslyhad much experience with how race factoredinto the 2008, 2012. but i would argue thatdonald trump, and some others in the republicanparty, have played out race in a more blunt andracist way than anybody in the last 30 or 40 yearsin american politics, and crossed a lot of linesthat previously were taboo. question, a, do you agree? and, b where will thatlead us as a country?
mike mccurry: i get haveto be very careful here since we still have twomore debates to negotiate. i am very, very troubledby some of the way in which he's made his appeals. you know there was a subtlyto nixon's southern strategy, which was equally racistbut the vocabulary was not so raw and poisonous, andlegitimizing for people who really are hardcoreracists who suddenly feel comfortable that they canbe public about things
that they haven'tbeen able to say, or maybe were furtiveabout, in the past. i mean that is a really,really deeply troubling thing. jim steyer: and david,what do you think? and also i'd beinterested, david kennedy what do you thinkabout it historically? david plouffe: wellit's very disappointing because i do think that if youlook at from ford until romney, we didn't reallysee much of that.
now let's remember ronaldreagan started his campaign in philadelphia,mississippi, right? so there is sometradition of this. but it's been absentfor a long time. there's no question. i think it's reallybecause of what mike said. i think there's a lotof people out there who want to hold on to the past. and you know the rising partsof the american population
and electorate, the risingpower of women, the rising growth of the muslim community,asian-american community, there's a pushback against that. but it's incredibly ugly. now barack obama,in our view, we don't think we lost anyvotes based on his race. but there's nodoubt i think some of the animus in the oppositionwhen he was in office was driven by that.
but it's grown over time. and my hope is-- i don't thinkthat the reasons trump did as well as he did in someof the economic anxiety and the populismand nationalism, we better not forgetthose on november 9th, because they're going tobe with us for a long time. why bernie sandersdid so well, these are really important things. but i don't think the trumpthing has to carry on.
i think there's going to bea lot of republicans that are going to want to put thataway in a time capsule never to be opened. and hopefully, imean most republicans who are in the businessare appalled by this. and so i think there willbe a pretty strong reaction. so that i do think youmight see a pushback. doesn't mean it will never comeback to our body politic again. but i do think that's one thingmost republicans who will still
be standing on november 9thwill want to not embrace and run away from. rob reich: david, what do youthink historically on that? david kennedy: well i hopedavid plouffe is right. future will tell. but i think, if nothing else,this campaign and other events, the police actions and so onin the last several months have served to remind usvividly, and unarguably, of how raw the racial divideremains in our society,
even when we thought we'dput that behind us in 2008. rob reich: we've justgot a few minutes left before we'll end at 8:30. and we've got some of the bestcampaign strategy minds here in the room. so i want to put therelevant question on the table, whichis getting you on the record with a predictionabout the electoral college outcome on november 8th.
jim steyer: i thought you guysdid a good job of that already. david plouffe:that's a tough one. because a lot can change,even though the structure of the race won't change, doesarizona get a little tighter? if i had to guess,she ends up at 347 and wins the national vote. if i had to guess. because i thinkjohnson and stein will continue tocollapse a little bit.
to me it sort of smells like a50, 44, 50, 45, kind of thing. if it's closer thanthat, it's because trump has two really good debates. she stumbles. and i don't thinkthat will happen. like she's not going to havea colossally bad debate. this is in her wheelhouse. she may not hit itup to the rafters. and you know the enthusiasmlevels are just really,
really poor. democratic turnout isworse than projected. republican turnout isbetter than projected. then you could be lookingat a three point race, let's say, where i think herelectoral college numbers 302. rob reich: and things likebrexit and the polling that was turned out to be soinaccurate there doesn't chasten you with respectto predictions here? well for this reason.
first of all brexitwas a unique event. so we know a lot aboutthe american electorate and how we think differentvoters are going to behave and how to incent that behavior. secondly, almost every poll overthe last week, or most of them had brexit winning. people didn't believe the polls. now you have to understand,campaign polling is on a factor like 100 timesmore sophisticated than any bs
public poll out there. but even all the publicpolls have clinton in a sustainable, strong lead. she's stronger in floridathan we ever were. and we won it twice. and i think florida, newhampshire are probably the two that gether over, assuming. and i think she'll win virginia,colorado, and pennsylvania quite easily.
so no, i don't think. the only way we couldhave a massive surprise and even peoplesay like well let's not talk about theassange craziness, ok? but if there is some kindof event in the world, donald trump doesn't givepeople calmness and security that he's goingto handle it well. so i just don't see anyblack swan event out there. i think it is what we've got.
it could tighten up againif she doesn't close well. and she has notalways dealt well with prosperity,political prosperity. so she's got to really like-- mike mccurry: you meanthat there's always the banana peel outthere somewhere. david plouffe: although tobe fair, that's not just her. that is a tendency of alot of successful politics is you begin to coast andthen you get in big trouble.
mike mccurry: it feels tome that's it like 49, 43. governor johnson probablywill get what 5% or 6%. i think he will dropdown from 8% where he is. now jill stein, the greenparty candidate maybe will get a percentage or 2%. so i would have--it's there i think. i mean if she gets above50%, that's extraordinary. her husband didn't do that. and that would, i think, beconsequential for the electoral
college too. i think you're righton those numbers. i think 300, somewhere inthat range, maybe more. jim steyer: we're going tobe here on november 15th with a similar band of folks,where we will be posturing up david and mike's projection. so my predictionis i always agree when it come to this withmy friend david plouffe. whatever he said is correct.
that's my answer. so i vote exact-- i give exactlythe same numbers as david does. rob reich: you want togive a prediction, david? david kennedy: no. my business is thepast not the future. jim steyer: how about you, rob? come on, rob? david plouffe: i agree. let's here, rob, come on,you have to go for it.
i feel a bit more wary aboutevents around the world, and the sense in which, evenas you acknowledge, david, that there's certainly a strainof populism that's on the rise a form of nationalism that'scoupled with a xenophobia. it's not just a us phenomenon. it's we see it elsewhere. and i think, as aconsequence, turn out's way more unpredictablethan it might have been in previous years.
of course, i don't haveaccess to the kinds of polling and data that you may. so i'm willing to cedesomething to your expertise and confidence aboutwhat you're seeing there, because i don't have accessto that kind of thing. nevertheless, the bodypolitic seems much more in turbulence rather thanin ordinary politics. and so i feel lessconfident in listening to the ordinary surveys.
now, i still think thathillary clinton will win. but i don't think it will beas great a margin as you're suggesting. jim steyer: so give aelectoral college number. i'd say somethingaround 300, 310. mike mccurry: you know idid want to make the point. i want to cover mybed a little bit here. the only predictable thingso far about this campaign is that unpredictablethings have happened.
and a veryconsequential thing is happening at this very moment. because there are a limitednumber of days left in which these candidates canengage the public and get their messagesacross to them. and we have a reallynasty storm that is going to divert theattention of this country over the next several days. and so both candidatesare going to lose
a substantial number of days. it probably willimpact the coverage of the debate on sundaynight, because that's about when i think at thatpoint that hurricane matthew is probably turning rightup into the carolinas. and that's going to beon everyone's minds, as well it should be. rob reich: all right. can i ask everyone tojoin me in thanking
our guests for this evening?