(dramatic music) (dramatic music) - As voters, we may be polarized.

But when it comes to suffering from PDS, Political Derangement Syndrome, we stand on common ground.

Today, we'll focus on the state of the twin pillars that support our democracy.

First, the ability to run a free and fair election.

Second, the public's trust in the outcome of that election.

Joining us with a crash course on how to strengthen and survive our electoral process is our distinguished bipartisan panel.

Nicole Hemmer, political historian and director of the Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University.

Astead Herndon, a national political reporter and podcast host for the New York Times.

David Jolly, former Republican Congressman and co-founder of the Forward Party, and Symone Sanders-Townsend, veteran political strategist and co-host of the MSNBC show, The Weekend.

We are thrilled to have you all with us.

Symone, I'm going to start with you.

Your fierce sense of purpose made you a political star of your generation.

At 25, you were the youngest press secretary ever for a presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders.

You've been a senior staffer for both President Biden and Vice President Harris, plus you have worked more than 20 campaigns.

You have been there, you have done that.

So this is the question.

Right now, which is the biggest problem?

Is it the integrity of our electoral system or the public's confidence in the fairness of our elections?

- I would argue the biggest issue is actually the public's confidence, not in just the fairness of the election, but in the systems of government.

If you look at Pew Center Research as some of the most comprehensive research that tracks the American people's confidence in government, and that's everything from the White House to Congress to the Supreme Court, increasingly, people have lost faith in institutions and that lack of faith in institutions.

And it's across you know, the age spectrum, if you will.

It affects Gen Z voters, millennial voters, but also older voters as well.

And that lack of trust in institutions, that lack of trust that government can change one's life contributes to I think a lot of the things we see today.

And so when I did work for President Biden, when he was then just candidate Biden, one of the things I often heard him say is you have to prove to people that government can work for them.

And I think from the outside looking in, what Joe Biden himself has tried to do with his White House, and now what he's attempting to do with his campaign, is prove to the American people that you can put your trust back in the government because it can work for you.

The problem is so many people are skeptical.

- David, there are really this cycle, two cross currents.

There are probably a lot more than that, but let's just settle on two.

One of them is that people are like, you know, "I'm not sure I'm getting off the couch.

I'm not, you know, why am I even, everything's sort of, you know, one's as bad as the other.

It's a lesser of two evils."

It's whatever you hear, right?

And then you hear the ominous warning that we hear so often that this is the most important election of our lifetime.

We hear it every year, right?

Do you think that that warning about the democracy being in trouble is going to override the malaise?

What's your feeling about it?

- I'm not sure it will override the malaise, but I think it needs to, and I think we are in the midst of a national conversation softly now, which I have in my head every night, which is this circular conversation, which is a very authentic one I think many of us have.

Is it truly an existential moment?

Is democracy in peril?

Is it possible that a return of the former President Donald Trump, given what we saw in the first administration and January 6th and his own declarations, would that tear at the democratic norms and our democratic institutions?

If so, it's an existential election.

Or are we underselling and are we lacking confidence in our own national resilience?

We have come through very dark chapters before we are remarkable American experiment.

We made it through the Civil War, we made it through the civil rights era.

We have made it through wars, we have made it through domestic political controversies, and we have come out still the strongest nation in the world.

And I don't know the answer to that circular argument, but it's exhausting to be on that track every night.

But I think the nation's having that conversation as well right now.

- Nikki, social scientists are showing, no surprise that tribalism is increasing, polarization's getting worse.

And it's really more about the visceral, it's more about the fact we don't like each other.

It's not even about policy.

It's about we don't like people who don't think like we do.

I want to go back to, because you're a historian, where this sort of began or where you track it to.

And that is that we swapped out the sunny optimism of Reaganism and it was replaced, conservatives replaced it with this angry kind of grievance politics.

And I want to know why that started.

- Well, there certainly had been a grievance politics on the right prior to the 1990s, but there is a real ramp up in the 1990s in part because the Cold War for 40 years had given Americans across the political spectrum a language of freedom and democracy that politicians felt beholden to.

And it created a lot of opportunities for expanding democracy in the United States.

And then the Cold War goes away.

And it creates even more space for an anti-democratic politics and an illiberal politics.

Pat Buchanan, who ran for President in '82 was a good example of this.

That then gets super heated in a political environment where entertainment is blending with politics, it's being sold as sport, and then it's blending with overtly partisan outlets that have both that entertainment motive and profit motive in mind.

And all of that has really supercharged American elections.

I mean, to throw into that a diversifying population, you know, by the 1990s we're like 25 years into having free and fair and open and inclusive elections in the United States, and you're starting to see a backlash to that as well.

So all of those are the ingredients that make, by the 1990s, politics particularly driven on the right to become emotional and angry and pessimistic in a way we hadn't seen for some time.

- I want to finally get your top line on this Astead which it has to do with the big lie and credibility.

And you know, we saw in 2022 the midterms that election deniers didn't generally win.

And so everybody sort of was like, well, that's a sigh of relief, but an enormous number of people in this country have bought into this whole notion that the election was stolen.

- Yeah.

- And I think that's, this is opinion clearly labeled, I think that's a huge factor going forward.

What do you think?

- I mean, certainly, if you would look at the numbers, it would tell you that a sizeable portion, if not majority of the Republican electorate in the early voting states like Iowa caucuses, thought that the 2020 election was illegitimate.

And for our reporting in the runup, as we go across the country and talk to Republicans, that is an overwhelming kind of belief.

And it kind of manifests itself in a lot of ways.

Some people would say, "Oh, I don't know, I don't trust that it was true."

Election integrity has become a real buzzword on the right.

And so if you go to those kind of events, they're openly talking and sowing doubts about the possibility that the next election will be free and fair.

- They're already doing that.

- And I think we should also rethink how we think about the midterms.

Certainly in those swing states, you had a lot of those election deniers lose in big races, but there was big impact to policies that happened on the state legislature level.

Like the rhetoric of the quote unquote "big lie" has been turned into policy in a lot of places.

You've seen limiting of drop boxes, you've seen kind of, that used as justification to target and intimidate poll workers, which is happening increasingly across the country.

So I think the rhetoric has had a tangible impact and certainly, it has gone to the question of credibility and trust within the system that I think is at the forefront for all of these institutions, as David's laying out.

Like whether it's media, whether it's politics, whether it's, I think a lot of institutions.

We talk, we did reporting about Evangelical church and the kind of credibility gap between leaders and rank and file.

I think a lot of what we're seeing in 2024 is a reflection of those weakened institutions.

- Jane, can I jump in?

Because I think from Nikki's work on the '90s to January 6th and Astead's work, there were tools that emerged that kind of bring it together.

Nikki alluded to this a little bit.

We saw the evolution of the Republican party from less government to no government, to government's the enemy.

But the reason they were able to make that full transition to grievance is because the emergence of new tools.

Big media, big money, and big data.

So with Citizens United and a lot of other moves when it comes to big money, all of a sudden, big money came into the system and it gave the parties resources they didn't have before.

Big media is simply new platforms.

New platforms cater to where people want to receive their information, but then big data unlocked it all because now, if I want to reach Uncle Bob in Central Pennsylvania with a precise message of white nationalism, that the election was stolen and your way of life is being stolen, I can reach them like that.

In the '90s, you couldn't reach them like that.

And as a campaign, you had to decide how to spend resources and you would spend it on the economy, or crime, or jobs.

You wouldn't spend a broad-based message on something like white nationalism or a stolen election.

You can do that now voter by voter by voter.

And it unlocked the potential of this grievance platform that we now see.

- Symone, I've watched you nodding a lot.

Go ahead.

- I have been nodding along and I want to build on what my good friend David Dolly just noted.

There is a piece here that we have not reckoned with and talked about, and that is in fact race.

And if you juxtapose, we're talking a lot nowadays, right, about the 14th Amendment that goes all the way back to post-Civil War.

And if you think about post-Civil War reconstruction, post-Civil War, into the, if you will, the treasonous (unintelligible) took up arms against the government because they wanted retain the ability to own people that look like me instead, they did not meet any actual consequences.

There were some, the folks who were in Congress, though there were members of the body who were expelled, hence where we get Section Three of the 14th Amendment.

But the folks who supported and fueled the secession, the people who participated with and upheld the Confederacy, they were welcomed back into society to the point where organizations were erected, the Daughters of the Confederacy that went around putting up statues and places all over this country changing the narrative.

And so narrative is very powerful thing here.

And I think that from post-Civil War all the way up to, I mean, you talk about a lot of times right now, we're talking about DEI and Affirmative Action, but the introduction of affirmative action policies in workplaces and government and spaces in places throughout our society.

Obviously, the election, you jump to the election of the first Black president, but prior to Barack Obama, there were Black mayors, there were Black elected officials all across the country.

There were Black elected officials in Congress, in the House, and in the Senate.

All of those things, the Tea Party emergence, emerged out of this grievance politics, but race was intrinsically tied into that.

And it is not hyperbole to suggest that you do not get a Donald Trump without a Barack Obama.

Not to say is, you know, the former governor of South Carolina noted that it is in fact his fault, but it's a reaction.

And so the people are reacting.

So I really think race is a key part of that.

And race is absolutely playing a part in this election in 2024.

And I think that inability for, you know, America, you know, the experiment, if the experiment that is the American experiment.

We have never fully, I think figured out how to have a true, honest race conversation.

And that plays itself out in business.

It plays itself out in our educational system and it absolutely plays itself out in media and in politics.

- And a couple things to build off that, it is not passive when you think about the kind of conservatives and how they're building power.

People talk explicitly about how the face of America is changing and very explicitly about how the rise of, you know, Latino voters or the rise or the growing share of Black voters in the country is a reason sometimes for people to reject the idea of majority rule.

I mean, we dedicated episodes to the language in which those election deniers were not just using about the past in 2020 specifically, but about the idea of democracy as a thing that inherently was a threat to... Because, you know, they see the inherent browning of the country as a threat.

And so the language of race is inextricably tied to I think the increasing test of democracy that we see now.

But I also want to throw in another fault line, which is age, you know, we get a lot of the problems that we are seeing, particularly when it comes to young people and faith and belief in systems, is not necessarily ideologically driven, but the idea that the system is not set up to produce results that are in line right?

And if you're a young person, is that not true?

You know, when we think of the Senate filibuster, if we think of the electoral college, if we think through the ways that gerrymandering has been entrenched in state legislatures, I think there's a lot of young people who very rightly look at a system and say that it is not accurately reflected where folks' concerns are and have been.

And so I think there is ways that there has been specific ideological messaging that impacts the question of polarization.

I think we should also acknowledge the unfairness of the system that is legitimately driving some of those feelings themselves.

- All right, well, where I want to go to now is the whole Tyranny of the Minority issue, which is, you know, people look at things they want done in this country, by majority, they want reproductive freedom restored, they want gun safety passed, they want LGBTQ rights, and yet, we see that there's a minority that's able to thwart those things happening.

So I mean, this galls people.

What do you have to say about that?

- Yeah, I would add to the electoral college, raise you a Supreme Court.

That there are nine people on the Supreme Court, six of whom are going to be setting the rules for this election.

And who people also see as potentially constraining access to democracy as with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

And so I think that there is this sense that there are all of these institutions that are counter majoritarian that are not responsive to public opinion.

And so you do have this real disconnect between what people want and what they're able to do.

And unless you have some sort of broad institutional reform, that's going to continue to be a stress point or a fracture point.

- Okay, but I don't think, David, the people really do understand.

I mean, they see razor thin majorities.

I mean they see that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by, what was it?

3 million but lost by 80,000 votes or something.

And they see that Republicans seem to have a lot of dominance without necessarily having won the elections to really back that up.

I mean, that's what I'm really talking about here.

Do you think people connect with that?

- I think most Americans understand the feeling of disenfranchisement, particularly younger voters.

I mean, consider now we're at 30 years in which the popular vote has only decided the presidential election one time, one time.

I mean, we talk about a free democracy in our republic, but the fact is, particularly if you're a younger voter, in your 30-year lifetime, the popular vote has only determined the presidency one time.

And so make that make sense, right?

Maybe it made sense in 1789, but I think it's hard for a young voter to understand how it makes sense now.

And then you move to the House of Representatives where look, it is fully rigged, the entire system is rigged and it is one area where yes, both sides agree to rig the system and then play by rigged rules.

But the truth is, you do not have an opportunity to either hold your elected representative accountable or to participate freely in democracy as it sits in the House of Representatives.

95% of the seats are predetermined for one party or another, done.

They're not competitive.

Right now, there's maybe 18 seats that are competitive every cycle.

And so it quashes true participation in that democracy.

- [Symone] I just thought- - Yeah, it depends on the cycle but.

- Sure, go ahead, Symone.

- Yeah, and to be clear, David Jolly's, correct.

There are 18 seats currently where the folks who represent those seats in the House are Republicans, and those are districts that Joe Biden won in 2020.

Those are the competitive frontline districts, if you will.

Some could argue there are other flippable districts potentially to expand the map for Democrats come November, 2024.

But I everything, yes, the system is rigged.

One could argue we can have conversations about the need to tear it up and start all over, but the system is literally built to survive.

And so a more feasible conversation, a more recognizable one that can actually lead to some change, is what can you do to change the system understanding what it is?

You have to be, as the Vice President often says, to see what can be unburdened by what has been.

So yes, the popular vote has only determined the presidency once in my lifetime, I'm 34.

But the electoral college is the way in which we elect presidents in this country.

This is how it works.

And so young people need to believe that their participation in that system can do something.

And there are many young people like myself, but many not like myself, many who have not seen that their participation can change things.

I've worked inside the system.

So I know that showing up that people raising their voices, that their votes do matter, that their advocacy does matter.

But the feeling that a number of younger folks in this country have, and I'm not talking about college students, I'm talking about millennials, and to be clear, the oldest millennials are 43.

A number of millennials do not feel like that their participation can change things and that is part of the problem.

But lest we let them continue to believe that that's true because our history suggests and actually informs us that in fact it's not - Hold your seats, Symone, we're going to get to that, but I want to go through a couple more things about how we got here, Nikki.

And I want to go back to Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt who wrote "Tyranny of the Minority" is I think their latest book, talk about the fact that Republicans don't have to win majorities anymore to take power.

And so if they did have to win majorities, maybe they wouldn't have become radicalized and beyond that, we wouldn't have dysfunction if they hadn't become radicalized.

So talk about, 'cause you're the expert in terms the right way here.

Go ahead.

- So this is a process that's been in place for probably the last 30 years or so when Republicans figured out that they could win without majorities.

And that was a big shift because remember in 1980, '84, '88, they won landslide majorities in presidential elections.

And in 1944, they won win a majority in order to win big in the House of Representatives.

But there is this kind of capture by the base that happens in the 1990s when it becomes clear as seats are becoming more stable, as there's less competition, that you can sort of work the rules to make it so that you can stay in power without winning those majorities.

And you can keep your base active and engaged and you can have that kind of fundraising prowess and message prowess and energy with a set of politics that don't necessarily win national elections.

And one of the things that Republicans have shown again and again in the 21st century is that there is a manipulatable distance between the number of votes that you need to win an election and the number of votes you need for a majority.

And that disconnect, I think, is what we're seeing now.

The idea that you can prevent certain people from voting, that you can have gerrymandering to have safe seats, that you can lean into an electoral college advantage.

And then if you again, have a Supreme Court that's in your corner, you can also get across the finish line that way.

And I think finding out ways to manipulate those rules over the past 30 years has resulted in a approach to elections that's less majoritarian.

- David, did you have something to add to that?

- Yeah, but so I went to work on Capitol Hill in 1994, so I was reliving the part of Nikki's narrative here, which was when New Gingrich and Republicans rose to power, they did two things outside of legislating in the contract with America.

They went to K Street and said, you owe us four decades worth of special interest money, so start paying up because we're in power now.

And the second thing they did is he dispatched Tom DeLay, then the majority whip, to say we're going to have a 50 state strategy to take over state legislatures that ultimately can control how lines are drawn for Congress and create this permanent majority of the minority.

And it has been incredibly effective.

- Astead, I want to talk to you about another factor here, which is the whole voter suppression, the movement.

I mean, after 2020, they all scrambled, a lot of the red states scrambled to try and enact, you know, legislation that would suppress the vote where, you know, blue states were trying to make it easier to vote.

We had the Supreme Court weighing in and further eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, and we didn't get through the national or the federal, you know, voting that would've made it a lot easier for people to vote.

So what is, I mean, this is still going on.

I mean, it hasn't been talked about as much lately because people are so like angry with each other all the time, but what are you seeing on that front?

- Yeah, the kind of threats that became I think a part of people's muscle memory about thinking about voter suppression are still there.

You know, and this is what I said earlier, that the language of kind of big law has been formalized more clearly in some of those red states where they were able to pass kind of more restrictive bills that limit mailboxes, that limit districts that I think are kind of the classic that we have talked about.

In some of the swing states, it's been harder to kind of get some of that stuff through, but I think the ever-present kind of, the ever-present conceit of those bills is still there and it's really driven by the right.

You know, when we go to Republican events, I was at the Republican winter meeting in Dana Point, California right after the midterm elections last year when they were asking themselves kind of what sank us.

You know, why didn't we do as well as we technically thought we could have or should have in last year's midterms?

And the overwhelming answer from the kind of Trump base that really drives a lot of the most, you know, drives a lot of the energy on the RNC has really captured the formalized party was blaming the mechanics.

They are blaming the idea that they say that, you know, Democrats used COVID in 2020 to make voting easier for their voters.

And there's a real split among them about whether they should engage in mail-in voting.

You know, Republicans used have an advantage in places like Florida doing things like mail-in voting that's been completely reversed because of the way that Trump was talking about it in 2022.

And this is the open conversation they were kind of having.

But all of that, it has the through line of election denial all the way through it.

So while there's the kind of Mike Lindell end of the spectrum, which is more, you know, I think, you know, your kind of classic election was stolen, the machines flipped the stuff.

- We should point out that Mike Lindell is the My Pillow Guy.

- Yes, Mike Lindell is the Michael.

- Some people may not know.

- Yes, yes.

So I'm saying if that represents one end of the election denial spectrum, there's a much more popular version that you hear all the time in the Republican party, which is that Democrats soft stole it by changing the rules legally in 2020.

And that all has that same kind of erosion type quality.

And so what I try to tell people is that if you listen to Republicans as they talk kind of amongst themselves, this is an open conversation that did not end in 2020.

It's not only been formalized in law, but it's also kind of looking ahead to 2024.

- The partisan lens is exceedingly strong.

I mean, this is also a case of where you stand depends on where you sit.

If you take the under vote from the presidential election to down ballot Republican races, even mainstream Republicans would tell you today, there's no way that Donald Trump got a $20,000 or 20,000 vote under vote in my state because everybody else voted for loyal Republicans down ballot.

So the presidential race must have been stolen.

Republicans couldn't accept that there were people who did not want to vote for Donald Trump, but still wanted to vote for Republicans.

And so if you sit with that partisan lens, that is a conviction.

And in terms of having a national conversation, you have to start that conversation by acknowledging that conviction, that they believe somewhere in this case, those 20,000 votes for Donald Trump evaporated, and it must have been through malfeasance.

- Symone, it used to be said that Democrats fall in love and republicans fall in line.

And that's because Democrats weren't always so careful about maybe choosing the best candidate, and Republicans were pretty strategic about it.

Now you've got the Republican base that's definitely in love, clearly, and you've got the establishment- - And in line.

- What?

- And they are also in line.

I still think my Republican friends fall in line and now they're in love and Democrats are still looking for love and have yet to get in line.

- All the wrong places, I know.

Okay, well wait a minute, Symone.

So wait, go back to this.

So yes, the GOP establishment has really fallen in line and I want to know what's changed the, maybe I don't, what's changed the equation?

- (laughs) Look, Jane, I don't think the equation has actually changed.

The difference is it's really just the makeup of the two parties.

There used to be that there was, I would argue one, maybe only two factions, but then under the Republican party apparatus, the factions are what fuel the machine that is the apparatus of the Republican party.

And so the apparatus is the party committees, the elected officials, you know, the people that we think about.

The factions, used to be conservative Republicans.

Now you've got Tea Party Republicans, you got your QAnon folks, you got your moderate Republicans, you got your Trump, your MAGA Republicans.

Like the list can go on.

If we sat here and talked about the Democratic party apparatus and the factions that support and fuel, if you will, that, we could name 100 different factions.

When you have 100 different people that you are also trying to speak to garner and corral, I think it looks very different.

I really just think that voters were spoiled.

Democratic voters are just confused and spoiled and younger voters like myself, frankly, I would also argue millennials were confused and spoiled.

People loved- There is an entire generation of people that tied their political ideology on the democratic side of the aisle to people like Secretary Clinton or Barack Obama, right?

Who got involved in the political process solely because of that person.

And what they believe and what they know to be true about politics is because of this elected official.

Elected officials are flawed.

And I think that our Republicans have known for a very long time because they have seen the system work for them that you do what you got to do to get what you want on the backend.

I think that there are a lot of factions within the Democratic party apparatus that want to be right, but the question is, do you want to be right or do you want to win?

- That's often the question.

All right, Nikki, I want to go into something though that sets this election apart, which has to do with the whole issue of strengthening, protecting, defending, preserving democracy.

And I was surprised to learn reading one of your pieces, that this whole notion of peeling away from democracy actually started a while back and what precipitated that with conservatives?

- So there was a moment just after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s when Pat Buchanan was deciding to run for president, where he was sort of tossed up the idea out there.

He was like, "You know, IBM is run really well and the Marines are run really well, but the American government is run terribly.

And isn't it better to have that kind of authoritarian top-down structure than democracy which actually doesn't work that well?"

And that idea that democracy doesn't work that well was something that kind of stuck.

And it had been there, it had been there for a while.

I mean there have been lots of anti-democratic movements in the United States over history, but in that particular moment, Buchanan came forward and said maybe democracy was a mistake and there was space enough for that argument to be taken up.

It gets taken up by the militia/patriot movement in the early 1990s, and it becomes kind of a subline in our politics that has been given an opportunity to kind of flower this idea that we're a republic, not a democracy, isn't just an argument about differing ideas of government, but it is an idea that maybe we have too much democracy.

And a lot of that is about maybe too many non-white people are voting.

A lot of that is about we can't win majorities and so democracy is a bad idea, but that's one of those moments where we see it percolating up and it has been there and been ignored, I think, even though folks like Buchanan have pretty overtly expressed anti-democratic politics.

- Astead, you were nodding there.

- Yeah, no, I think that's all really true.

The amount of times in talking to kind of, what you would consider your MAGA voter or someone in that ecosystem that they mentioned that we're a republic, not a democracy, happens all the time.

And it's because that like language is popular in that media ecosystem as a way to invalidate the system.

And it comes from both sides.

It both comes from the political tactical sense that if the country moves in the direction we think it's moving, we will no longer win.

That's certainly part of it.

But there is also a part of like, the people who are coming, the people whose voice is taking up more cultural or political institutions here are somehow resting our country away from a core value.

So it's both like the moral kind of question and the political tactical one, but the language is so kind of embedded in the kind of conservative power-building on the right that sometimes, you can really feel the silos of the two different parties.

Because they will use the language of democracy, but it's not in the way that Joe Biden gets his speech and talks about democracy protection.

They think that the core problem with our democracy right now, for some people, is that it's too much of it.

There's just too much democracy.

- Jane, I think this is one of the most important conversations the country can have today because it comes down to a question of race.

And Symone alluded to this earlier, but Nikki's alluded to it, Astead has as well.

The rise of the strong man in American politics has been on the right on an agenda of preserving how America used to be.

And it is in stark contradiction to what Symone alluded to very presciently earlier, which is that the story of race and the African American in our American history is one of progress towards greater liberty, greater freedom, greater rights, greater equity.

The strong man in American politics that exists exclusively now on the right is telling white America that that progress is coming at a cost to you and that you are losing your way of life.

And the reason it is so dangerous is because if that way of life is being taken from you, is being ripped from you, you have a right to stand up and fight.

And that leads to incidents like January 6th.

And one of the most important concepts that honestly, in my asking hard questions around these issues that has come out in the last five years is that it that justice and equity is not a zero sum game.

Just because there is equity for all races does not mean that some races have to lose their position in society or their equity.

But this is the power of the rise of the strong man on the right.

And it comes down to a question of right race.

Progress for minorities and non-whites in America verse what white America has been sold as a regression of their way of life.

- Have you been surprised?

You served in that chamber in the House of Representatives.

Have you been surprised in terms of seeing how people have perpetuated, have facilitated, have enabled the sorts of things you were talking about?

- Angered, as much as surprised.

- Anger.

- Anger.

Raw anger and my impatience with Never Trumps who believe they can stay in today's Republican party is growing more and more palpable.

You cannot be Never Trump and still a Republican today.

We are eight years into this movement that is rooted in white nationalism and very questionable convictions on very core issues of race.

And I think it's a hard question for Republicans but also for the country, obviously, a personal opinion I'm sharing there.

- Symone, I'm going to have you kick off solutions.

What do you see that could actually make some sort of difference within our lifetimes?

- The point that David made earlier about the fact that there was a 20, 30-year strategy that was dedicated on the right in conservative, in traditional conservative, not Trump conservative, we got to put qualifiers or conservative nowadays, but in the conservative movement to grab at power at the state level is true.

And it's a factor here because there was not that focus in the democratic party apparatus.

I mean, one of the criticisms frankly of the Obama years is in fact, the lack of focus in investing into the state party infrastructure where everybody remembers Obama for America.

There was not a investment, if you will, into the Democratic party apparatus.

And there there were seats that people just didn't put people up for to run in state legislatures.

America's policy is made in state legislatures.

And so we can talk about federal reforms at the federal level and I think there are conversations to have there, but people need to run in places all over America and win.

We need people who believe in small d democracy to serve in state legislature.

Because America's policy again is made in state legislatures.

I think the last thing I'll say is that when we talk about the generational divide, if you will, in our American politics, whether we're talking about Democrats and Republicans, that generational divide also lends itself to what reform can and should look like.

You know, I was a senior advisor to the president's first campaign.

I was on the transition.

I sat in the meetings where people talked about court reform and how people who had served in some of the highest levels of the United States government for years longer than I've been alive, noted about just how this wasn't possible, this wasn't feasible.

Nowadays I think increasingly more and more folks are asking, "Well, why not?"

The Supreme Court for example, hadn't always had nine justices.

It has changed over time, why not now?

So this idea that the system as it currently looks is the best version and we just need better people, I think it's something that is increasingly challenged by younger people given their experience with the system, a democracy frankly, that they feel as though has not worked for them.

- Nikki, what do you think in terms of, I mean, all sorts of things have been suggested, Danielle Allen, who's a brilliant woman, talks about growing the house, that that could be one way to go.

That, you know, we could do this.

Well, they've tried 700 times to get rid of the electoral college or change it or reform it and that hasn't worked out.

So let's not hold our breath on that.

But what about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact?

Is that what it's called?

I mean, what do you see as something that again is... Is anything feasible?

- Yes, things are feasible.

They are very long-term projects, right, that you have to both pursue on two tracks, right?

Some of these more immediate things like the Interstate Compact, which would allow states to kind of band together to help ensure that the person who wins the popular vote wins the election.

It is a great non-constitutional amendment fix for the electoral college.

Will it actually work in practice?

And will it happen?

Like if Donald Trump were to win the popular vote and Joe Biden were to win the electoral college vote, do we think that that compact would function and would people actually stick by it?

I'm not so sure.

So we could see some of those short term fixes in action.

But I also think there is this longer term, longer track project, which is one, selling people on the idea that multiracial democracy is a good form of government.

I keep think we have a lot of people who are pro-democracy, but not necessarily actively making the argument about why that matters and going back to that kind of base level to say, "Hey, this is the good thing about this form of government and why it needs to be fought for and defended."

And then to Symone's point, the idea of grassroots local action.

There's so much focus on national elections, but if we're going to rebuild trustworthy functioning government in the United States, it's going to have to start at the local level.

And there are lots of people doing really good work on this front.

Even in where I am, I'm in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a state that has some pretty reactionary politics right now.

And it also has a lot of people who are working very hard to make sure that people's voices are still heard on issues like gun rights or even the right to petition the government.

And so I think we need to look at those kind of local green shoots for democracy and think about how we can cultivate those and include those in the message of, you know, why democracy is worth preserving.

- You often see at a local level that it's easier for people to get together because they're worried about the same streets, they're worried about the same water, they're worried about the same schools, and there's a lot more cooperation so your point is well-taken.

So is the point about state legislatures, I mean people, they're not sexy.

Well I shouldn't say that, but they're not, you know, well, they're not sexy and the point is people- - You're right, Jane.

- [Jane] What?

You agree with me?

- I said you're right.

It doesn't feel sexy on the outside, but you know what's sexy?

Civil rights.

I find that very sexy.

Freedom.

And those are things that are born out of state legislature.

(audience applauding) - Ooh, she's good.

You are good.

Wait a minute, I lost my train of thought here.

So going to instead to talk about reform.

What do you see as something that's... - Yeah, I'll underscore one thing that Nikki said, which was the thinking that you have to pitch democracy and actually convince people that it is worth defending.

I find that to be something that sometimes, there is a shared assumption that we have all agreed on this thing and we all kind of, those are kind of fights in the past.

But I really encourage people to think about that as an active fight and as one that requires people to be convinced.

And particularly when we're talking about what is an acknowledgement of a change in what that democracy has often represented.

You know, for a lot of people, the kind of comforting narrative of a 200-year stable democracy that's only been recently upended by, you know, this scary orange man, I think really dilutes what I think is a real kind of more core question the country's asking itself.

And then the idea of multiracial democracy to that point has been only more recently tested and I think it's a much more unsturdy foundation than I think we give it credit for.

But as the journalist here, I would really say a reform I would talk about is a reinvestment in local news.

I would think about the ways in which accountability has eroded from a bottom up.

I would think about ways which people are interacting with local government in the same ways.

And even when we think about questions like polarization, I think there are stories about neighbors and friends and communities- - Right.

- That have been lost in a kind of growing bubble that only deals with kind of national and kind of globalized media rather than I think where I had my journalism start, which was in local newspapers.

And so even in that kind of time that I have gone up, you have seen that track erode and I think there's a real kind of democracy impact to that.

And so beyond the reforms, beyond the kind of federal legislation, I think a country that cares about press, cares about local press, cares about Black, Latino press, cares about, you know, all of those kind of things is a healthier democracy.

And one of the reasons I think polarization has been allowed to kind of, you know, not maybe allowed but has hardened in ways has are because those stories aren't being told in the same way.

- Yeah, or people aren't hearing them.

David, you did co-found the Forward Party with former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and people have obviously a lot of ambivalence about third parties.

They see them as spoilers or they see them as fracturing the electorate.

You, it's my understanding, did it because you wanted to put forward reforms that would make a difference in what we've been talking about today.

- Yeah, we could take a whole 'nother show on this.

As a quick disclosure, I led an organization into the merger of what is now the Forward Party, never joined because of professional conflict reasons.

But let's talk about the multi-party space because across the globe, the United States is an outlier with its entrenched two party system.

Multi-party democracies have greater participation, greater diversity, greater outcomes for the electorate and greater legislative achievements.

We know that from the data, we don't have a multi-party democracy in the United States in large part because it requires entrenched majorities to pass reforms that are against their own interests.

- Exactly.

- 40% of America, 45% arguably now, registers or identifies as independent where people who register as Republicans or Democrats are only in the high 20%.

So most of the country would prefer to say, "I don't want to be identified with a major party, I want to be an independent."

And we kind of assume away that on election day we perform 50-50.

But the reality is it's because you're only presented with two choices.

Here's the most important takeaway from my work in the multi-party space.

It's this.

All independents are not moderates.

They're all over the spectrum, left, right, middle, and most importantly, many of them are ideologically diverse within their own politics.

I, David, and for very aggressive gun bans, but I'm also for more competitive corporate taxes.

Show me a party that allows me to exercise that ideological diversity.

We're not constructed that way.

Here's the good news about this.

Voters in many states can pass citizen-led initiatives for reform to open primaries, to undo gerrymandering, to have public financing.

Alaska just passed one of the most aggressive ones because voters insisted on a universal primary.

Everybody gets one ballot, gets to vote.

You move top five to election day, you use rank choice voting.

And guess what?

On election night two years ago, they elected a statewide Republican senator and a statewide democratic house member because more people got to participate.

The more participation of voters, the more true democracy you get.

The final piece I would give you on this, we often conflate the New Party movement with independent runs.

Building a multi-party democracy is about building durable, sustainable minor parties at the state level.

It is not about running a vanity presidential ticket that perverts and distorts the two-party election in November.

- You thinking of anybody?

- I am.

And that is a very different exercise which I think is ill-suited for today's environment.

- Okay, we are actually, if you can believe this, down to final questions, hard to believe.

Symone, you wrote a book?

"No, You Shut Up."

That's what it was called, right?

"No, You Shut Up."

- Yes.

"No, You Shut Up: Speaking Truth to Power and Reclaiming America."

- The second part's the important part actually.

The first part came from Ken Cuccinelli, right?

Okay.

So you clearly, are a force of nature and people are looking at you going, "I could never have that kind of power to make change."

Tell them they can have that kind of power to make change.

What's the first step?

- I think the first step is one, believe, just identifying what it is that you are focused on.

I'm a little bald Black girl from North Omaha, Nebraska.

I did not know anybody that worked at the White House.

My family does not come from money, if you will.

I didn't grow up knowing that like, thinking I could be a governor or a spokesperson or host a television show.

So, but I did grow up in formative spaces in my community, and thanks to my parents, about being engaged and involved.

You know, Astead talked about he got his start in local news.

You know, the first time I could exercise my writing chops was at the local Black newspaper, the Omaha Star, which my mother is now the owner and the publisher.

And so I would just say people have to identify what it is, like one, what's your issue?

And then can you build a coalition to help fix it?

And your issue might be the pothole around the corner.

Your issue could be that you live in a food desert.

Or you know, your issue could be the fact that one of the major candidates running for president says he going to be a dictator on day one, possibly all the days while if in fact, he's elected.

Identify your issue, build a coalition around that issue of like-minded people who care about that thing that you care about and formulate a plan that way.

I think we talk about change in these grandiose ways where if you want to get the pothole fixed, there are steps you can go through to get your pothole fixed.

Think about it like a pothole.

- For a woman who never thought she was going to have a show, let me just say to you, your show on the weekend show is just fabulous.

It's informative, it's entertaining.

I don't plug things, but I'll make an exception for you.

Nikki, going to you, look, I always like the history's lessons question, which goes to this polarization.

It wears people out, we're exhausted.

We want it to be over.

On the other hand, we don't want to talk to people who don't agree with us.

So the question is based on history's lessons, is the fever ever going to break?

- I mean, it's not just going to break overnight, right?

Polarization exists in part because it's a useful political tool and it also exists because people disagree on fundamental values and fundamental issues.

And that's okay.

It does make our politics sometimes very difficult and like, we should want, I think our side to win, especially like if you are for a more inclusive country, that seems like something worth fighting for and winning.

And our history shows us that those fights can be won by ordinary people.

And that is often ordinary people who are the ones who are involved in those fights and that they happen very slowly and then they happen all at once.

That people toil for generations to make change happen.

They live through times that aren't polarized that are really bad for them because a majority of people agree that they shouldn't have rights and they shouldn't have a say.

And then things get polarized and then they have access to rights.

So polarization isn't necessarily a bad thing.

It means that we're fighting over something that matters.

It just means that people instead of tuning out, have to stay engaged because if you care who wins in a polarized battle, you can't just walk away from politics.

You have to stay engaged in it or you're forfeiting the fight.

- Still, we persist.

Astead, I want to ask you, because I thought it was really lovely to read that you love your job because you get to travel around and you get to talk to people and you get a lot of the positive feedback you were talking about earlier, which is that people care passionately about their communities and their neighbors.

And my question to you is, if we got tucked into your suitcase and we got to go along, would we feel better about the country?

- Oh, in some ways.

I mean, I have been in situations where the generosity and kindness of people who are radically different than me who I showed up to very intimate spaces with them and just knocked on the door and said, "Can you tell me your personal beliefs about all these personal things?"

Like the amount of people who are willing to do that is always heartwarming.

The amount that people are willing to be honest about things that are challenges in their life always really reminds me that there is a kind of shared humanity, 'cause I'm always like, you know, if a Black guy from the New York Times can show up in the middle of a Trump rally and ask people of real stuff, so can you, you know?

And so that's part of the message I take, but I also think that like there are real difficulty, I'll tell a story that really encapsulates this.

One time, the day that Biden was announced as the winner of 2020 after the count of the ballot, I was in Mason, Texas and I was doing this story, this is before January 6th.

I was doing this story about how it does not matter.

Like there is a section of Trump supporters who will not recognize this person.

Because that's a group of people I was spending time reporting about.

So some of these people end up at the 6th, some people are joined, I had spent the day with these folks and went to their church in Mason, Texas.

And I have this and these folks made me lemonade.

They gave me a Sunday devotional that I spent this afternoon with them.

They made me lunch.

They also said the N word.

And all of those things exist in one afternoon, right?

And so all I'm saying is if you were to be in that suitcase, you would both really understand the stakes of this and the ways that I think the country is wrestling with really hard truths about itself.

And you'll see that on a lot of individual levels, like people are a lot closer than I think our national politics are.

- David Jolly, your mother told a story about you.

- Oh my word.

- Yup.

That when you were 10 or 11, you would come home and you wouldn't go out and ride your bike like other kids.

You wouldn't go out and you know, play.

You would grab a box of vanilla wafers and you would go in- - You are so good.

- Yeah?

And you would go in and you would plunk down on the couch and you'd watch the news, which she thought was an omen for the future.

And one of the faces you saw on the news was a congressman, was it Bill Young?

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- Bill Young.

And you would later go to work for him.

He was a congressman and you witnessed how much he respected the process and being a legislator and being in Congress.

And then you ran for a seat and you won his seat.

- Yeah.

- And my question to you is this.

Do you see a return to that reverence and respect greater than what we have today for our democracy, for our Constitution, for our people?

- Not if we step out of the fight.

Bill Young served for 43 years.

He got elected in 1970 and I was born in 1972.

I thought I was going to work for a rabble-rouser Republican.

And I went to work for one of the finest legislators the institution has seen.

He passed away in office, I was at his bedside.

I ended up elected to Congress 12 weeks later, assumed his chair, his desk, and his office.

And it was a very sobering event, but I assumed his office in the midst of a very turbulent time where Republicans were becoming the party we see now.

I refuse to go along with that.

I called on then candidate Trump to drop out of the race and I never came around to it.

The question we started this episode with is this an existential moment or are we resilient enough to come through it?

I don't know the answer to that.

I hope we are resilient enough.

What I do know is that if we step out of the fight, they win and we won't be resilient enough to push through this.

And last time I was with you, we had a six-month old daughter who is now in kindergarten and as a younger brother, Teddy.

And what I do know is that I want them to know that their father has a lot of dust on his face from the arena, and I think everyone in this room is here because they believe in that conviction as well, that this is a democracy worth fighting for, and if we stop, the powers that can defeat it are going to win real quickly.

(audience applauding) - That's why you're the closer.

I don't know what to say to this panel except that we're going to have you back, all of you, just fabulous.

And I don't know that it'll be the filibuster show, but it'll be something else that you're really going to want to talk about.

So thank you, all.

We are now going to wrap up our show with our silver lining, which features college students who personify Symone's words of wisdom about making change.

Students for Voting Justice want everyone's voice to be heard at the ballot box.

The paid internship program focuses on Get Out the Vote efforts in communities of color, leadership, training, and how to fight for voting rights.

It's a fight that's personal for activists like Jordan, a young Black woman who was raised in the South.

As Jordan says, "I understand the fragile state of voting rights.

Instead of standing by and waiting for change to occur, I, like Civil rights icon John Lewis, plan to get into good trouble and be the change."

We're grateful to our extraordinary guests for their insights and inspiration and to you for joining us today.

Until we see you back here next time, from the Frederick Gunn School in the other Washington, Washington, Connecticut, for Common Ground, I'm Jane Whitney.

Take care.

(dramatic music) (happy string music) (exciting music)