GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, August 14, 2018

[0:00:04 Speaker 0] in the news

[0:00:12 Speaker 1] morning. I’m Professor saw

[0:00:13 Speaker 0] an Professor McDaniel. Welcome to in the news for introduction to American and Texas Government. I

[0:00:18 Speaker 1] think this is our last session for this second semester of the summer. So congratulations, you guys all made it to the finish line. That’s looking pretty good form. Daniel kind of drove the train, and I notice you’ve got non voters in the 2016 election. What are you referring here?

[0:00:33 Speaker 0] So there’s a piece in The Washington Post which is highlighting the role of non voters and and the peace seem to suggest that people who did not turn out to vote had just as much of an effect on the election. Is those who did not. Specifically, they argue, the demographics of those who did not turn out to vote looked like Democrats. And so if they did turn out to vote, we may have had a completely different election. Specifically arguing that the number people or the percentage of Americans there were eligible to vote who chose not to vote, was higher than the percentage of Americans who chose the vote for either Hillary Clinton or President Trump. So their argument is that non voters swayed this in a major way. And there has been a sergeant specifically in certain states such as Michigan, because of lower levels of turnout specifically amongst African Americans. After you saw high levels of turnout in 2000 and eight in 2012 with Obama on the ticket, the idea was trying to continue that momentum. No. But one thing that is important to note is, while some people may at question this issue of non voters, that if they turn out the vote, this would have mattered. One thing one cup of not voters that we’re not talking about are those who voted for Trump. One of things that President Trump was able to do much like President Obama was able to do was get people who traditionally did not vote to turn out to the polls. And one of things that research has shown is that Americans who express kind of high levels of nationalism or specifically we’re really buying to the America first motto these individuals were for kind of uncritical patriots were kind of the idea of America. Love it or leave it there actually less likely to participate and what’s important to note is that it looks like in this election President Trump was actually able to get these individuals out to vote. And so it’s important that we’re talking about not theirs of not sore about nonvoters. It’s It’s some part of the story of certain people didn’t turn out to vote. But certain people who traditionally don’t vote did vote. And so it’s a very tricky store. But I know Professor Shaw is much more nuanced discussion about really the influence of non voters and elections.

[0:02:43 Speaker 1] Well, it’s kind of funny because, you know, Professor McDaniel saw this article next, he a friend of mine, a colleague, Mark Heatherington in North Carolina, sent me the same piece from Washington Post. Um, and if we could, I’d like to put the We have a graphic prepared from the article. The essence of the Washington Post article is that Aziz, you all know from the the lecture on turnout, about 60% of people eligible voters voted in the 2016 election. It was down a little bit from 2008 up a little bit from 2012. So, you know, right in that 60% ballpark and the question is, or the data that The Washington Post brought to bear speak to the issue of whether non voters have distinct preferences from voters. And so if non voters had participated, would the election have shifted? And this is an interesting question, right? We’re always interested in questions of democratic representativeness on and full participation on, and this is something of political science has considered quite a bit. You know what would happen if everybody showed up and voted? Would our elections be different? Is there a skew, a systematic skew to the composition of the electorate? Such that you know, the active voting, the participatory act itself, when certain people decide not to do that actually has an impact on outcomes Now, Eyes professor went down, said, I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about this lately, and, um, I think that what The Washington Post does here is both instructive and useful and a little misleading. It’s instructive and useful in the sense that they point out. As many scholars have pointed out before, the non voters don’t look like voters. Demographically, that is to say they’re not nonvoting. Segment of population is less educated. It’s a little more non white that is Asian and Hispanic and, to a lesser extent, African Americans. On this, this last point has changed a little bit lately, are less likely to vote than white. So the non voting population is is less white. It tends to be younger. And so you add all that up and you go, Well, wait a sec. Nonvoters seem to look a lot like Democrats, you know? Would it be the case that if non voters showed up in voted, Democrats would get more votes? And this, I think, is kind of the working assumption and a lot of political science literature? And it’s really the working assumption behind The Washington Post article, right? The Post article says, You know, nonvoters gave Trump the election. You know, if they had showed up and voted, Clinton would have won enough votes in some of these states to have won an Electoral college majority. Because, of course, she, in fact, did win the most popular votes, Right. Okay, my sense is, and this is all I want to say about this, but I want to leave you with the somewhat counter intuitive, provocative notion. I think that the defining characteristic of non voters is not that they are, you know, Democrats or Republicans is that they’re not interested. They’re not involved. They’re not engaged with politics at the same level as voters. That shouldn’t say they’re not not interested. There’s simply not engaged and interested at the level of voters. So what happens if they showed up? What would they do? And The Post says, Well, if they showed up, they would have realized they’re kind of latent Democratic Proclivities, right? They would have showed up and voted like people who look like them ended up voting. I actually don’t think that’s correct. I think that the distinguishing characteristic, as I said, is that they’re not really engaged or rooted in the political system. They’re not partisan the way that voters are. So if and if they did show up, they would be more susceptible to short term forces than voters are. Sometimes those forces favor the Republicans. Sometimes they favor the Democrats. So if you’re out there thinking well, you know, if there’s a high turnout election Democrats air axiomatic Lee going to do better, I think you’re gonna be disappointed. The short answer is it depends. You know the answer to the question. What would happen if everybody showed up and voted? You know, in 1984? If non voters would have voted, Reagan would have won by even Mawr in 1996. If non voters would have voted, Clinton would have won by even more because the short term forces in those elections favored, you know, in 84 that favored Reagan, the Republicans in 96 they favored Clinton and the Democrats. So you get low turnout elections like 2010 where the Republicans do really well. But you also had a lower turnout election in 2006 and the Democrats swept the House in the Senate. So in 2018 if

[0:07:19 Speaker 0] you have a

[0:07:19 Speaker 1] low turnout election, can we say the Republicans are going to do relatively well? I don’t think so. I think the short term force, as it looks right now, is going to be slightly favorable to the Democrats. So it’s not clear to me at all that a lower turnout election is gonna hurt the Democrats in 2018. In fact, it may help because the question turnout is really kind of more of a factor on the Republican side than the Democratic side. Okay, so anyway, that’s the end of my little sermonette on this. The Post articles worth reading It is absolutely the case that non voters look demographically like there be more favorable to Democratic candidates and Democratic issue positions. That’s absolutely true. What I’m suggesting to you is that move away from the partisanship and consider the possibility their defining characteristic is actually their level of engagement or lack thereof. Not so much their latent partisanship. Okay, so now there’s a big caveat here. Professor McDaniel and I were talking about this before class, and the caveat is African American nonvoters, right? I think the defiant. You know, if if African American non voters show up on Election Day, they almost certainly would vote Democratic, right? They don’t blow, you know, just because people liked Reagan in 1984 it doesn’t mean the black voters were gonna vote for Reagan had they had certain black non voters showed up at the polls, Right? That’s a complication. But I would also say that the flip side of that is interesting as well. Is that you know, is is it that, you know, because the racial divide politically, that is the attachment of African Americans to the Democratic Party becomes more solid, which seems impossible. But it’s actually increased the last 10 or 15 years. Whites have become more committed to the Republican Party. So it’s it’s not still not entirely clear to me that this Washington Post story actually holds. The other fine point is federalism that the Electoral College, the distinction that the breakdown of the presidential election because not a national election. It’s a collection of elections across states. I think this story of turnout in 2016 varies depending upon the state. Professor McDonough correctly pointed out. Michigan was the state were turnout dropped from 12 4016 and it looks like it disproportionately dropped in African American areas. You know, like Wayne County, like in Detroit. Although it’s hard to tell sometimes because Detroit is losing registered voters at a rate that it’s hard to tell whether black turnout dropped or it’s a population drop. You know, we look at the wrong number, registered voters who showed up and voted, and it did drop. But Wayne also lost a lot of population, Michigan and Wisconsin. There were population dropped. So this Washington Post article, I think ISMM or credible, more compelling in those cases in Pennsylvania, the other key state in 2016 turnout went up. Hillary actually did better in Philadelphia and in areas where this heavy after concentrations of African Americans than Obama did in 2012. Bizarre as that may seem sometimes, right? So even within the context of this Washington Post story you have to bear in mind. There’s state by states is that’s how elections are decided in the United States presidential elections, actually, all elections. So be attention to that. As you guys air kind of gearing up and thinking about, you know what, what to make of the 2018 elections? Turnout matters maybe not reflexively, as people sometimes think. Boy high turnout helps Democrats. Sometimes, you know, if short term forces favor Democrats than high turnout will help Democrats. If not, they probably won’t. So, anyway, that’s That’s my sermonette. I

[0:10:45 Speaker 0] think it was really important here that you point out this is local, and so a lot of these things that were talking about our when we’re talking about turnout for the off year elections or for talking about turning for the president’s election. A lot of this is at the local level of state or local level, and so to really tell a story about national turnout is problematic given the role of local and state, and things were split up. And so this is a sports shots playing out these types of articles. They’re interesting, they’re thought provoking. But they’re flawed in the sense that they try to tell a story as if the nation is voting is one big block when, really, no, it’s a bunch of smaller blocks that are doing this.

[0:11:28 Speaker 1] I think I remember The Washington Post articles referent to the 2016 presidential election were turned on a 60%. There will be about a 15 to 20 point drop in turnout to the midterm election. So without the, you know, the big race at the top, the presidential people less interested lesson gays will be less party efforts to mobilize voters. And so, you know, one question is, you know what happens when you lose. 20% of the eligible electorate that voted in 2016 won’t be around one in five people who voted last time around a relatively vote last time won’t show up and vote this time. And you know, is that gonna help the Republicans? Or it’s gonna help the Democrats because Trump’s not at the top of the ticket. Or, on the other hand, we think of this, this phenomena this Ah, it’s a decline after the surge in the presidential is actually a theory and political science called surge and decline, where we’re talking about turnout, surges in the presidential, then declines in the midterm. And typically we think that that hurts the president’s party right that declining turnout presidents not the top of the ticket people jazzed about voting in 2016 fall off. And it’s disproportionately hurtful to the president’s party. Except what happens to this surgeon decline story when the president didn’t win the popular vote. You know my sense about 2018 in this kind of argues against my I do think there’s gonna be a kind of soft, short term force favoring the Democrats. I’m not gonna go out on a limb on that, but I think there will be. But on the other hand, you know, we don’t expect that much of a decline for Trump because there wasn’t much of a surge. You know, Hillary Clinton won by two or three points. So you know the the extent to which you win in the presidential is going to be determinative of the extent you lose in the midterm. That’s something we know, right? Big time presidential winds are almost always accompanied by a fairly significant drop offs in the next election. Okay, a couple more topics to cover you got. Ah, Medicare, Prescription drugs, which is just down in case you haven’t figured out, is a health care expert. So

[0:13:32 Speaker 0] yeah, the doctor. Quite a bit. So this really one thing, it’s popping up in health policy and really one of the major concerns specifically with Medicare. So we champion Medicare. As you know, one of the classic examples of socialism within the U. S. And there are concerns about really Medicare Part D. It’s a Medicare Part D came about during the Bush administration is a way to control the costs. Prescription drugs for the elderly. It was updated again, and under the Obama administration and what people have championed it in the sense that it’s lowered the cost of payments that individuals have to make. We’re not paying it. Institutes on the back end, the drugs becoming more expensive, and the government is paying more into it. And so this piece in the Washington Post argued that one of the reasons why you see this increased cost is because of the way Medicare Part D is set up, that in some ways exit incentivizes insurance companies to pay mawr for prescription drug prices because after they reach a certain limit from certain anything, it’s $5000 out of pocket for the individual. But government comes in and starts paying for a large portion of it, and the insurance company is off the hook for Ford, and so there. That’s part of it, but also you seen a larger and increased enrollment. And so we’re seeing the baby boomers move into retirement. We’re seeing kind of this group that has that large group that didn’t have a lot of kids, and so the people who are taking our large and the people who are contributing, and so this becomes really one of the major problems we have of regarding so security Medicare in our care for the elderly because again, it’s something that politicians don’t want to touch. Many waits the third rail of politics. But if you really want to talk about spending Medicare, so security are really the two big place or two of the big places where you probably need to cut spending in order to get the budget where you want it.

[0:15:27 Speaker 1] All right. I like the graph that we’ve got up right now, which is from The Washington Post article, and it just talks about, uh, talk about it demonstrates Watch my language here. Little sloppy towards the end of the summer. Um, it shows this increase in expected costs accruing to different aspects of health care in the United States on so you can see, you know, the amount of spending you see the projections so these could change. But the projections are going to go up almost not quite exponentially, but significantly over time. And is Professor McDaniel pointed out, a lot of that. Part of it is is the way we’ve structured the spending increases, But part of it is the target populations as the baby boomers age, and that’s a big you know. People refer to it sometimes as the you know, the rat in the python. You know, when a snake eat something, there’s that big bulge if you look at ah, the age profile of the United States. The baby boomers were huge generation, and for years they were the ones who are paying into the system so that the elderly could could be supported through these health care and Social Security arrangements. Well, the baby boomers are now not earning so much as they are retiring, and when they retire, they begin to consume those entitlement programs. And so it’s Gen X and then Gen Y and the Millennials, who, as the dominant forces in the workforce, are going to be paying for the retirement and the medical benefits that go to that baby boomer generation, Professor McDaniel said. When we start thinking about commitments, deficits, things that are going to, you know, we’re going to pay for moving forward this year a big deal, and this obviously dovetails with the lectures modules that we’ve had recently on domestic policy. You know, when we talk about entitlements and the budget, we’re talking about Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and those were the huge, huge kind of gun along with defense. I should point out defense those of the huge, dominant elements of the budget that nobody really wants to touch, because they have constituencies that are very sensitive to those benefits that value them enormously. And one thing we know about the elderly is the elderly do vote speaking about turnout. So the consequences of potential consequences for doing something that, uh, you know, that negatively impact that constituency, the consequences could be quite significant, etc. In a low turnout midterm election. If you get the you know the senior citizens riled up, you’re asking for trouble. So a rate, it’s It’s interesting that the article in the Post kind of talked about the cost structure and the prescription drug benefit that you know we have. If anything not. If anything, it’s clear we have added to the costs associated with Medicare and Medicaid over the past 25 years, right, we have added a prescription drug benefit not under Obama, that was under Bush, the prescription drug benefit and then an expansion of Medicaid under Obama. So those programs are pretty popular, you know, have been historically popular, and if anything, we’ve tried to improve them and expand them over time. So our commitments have gotten larger over time and that, you know, as a society, we’ve made some decisions that that’s the appropriate thing to dio. Economically, though, it’s a substantial commitment, and it’s a commitment that will increase over time because of the age structure of the American population.

[0:18:56 Speaker 0] It’s again, if you think about what Sharp pointed out about these there, certain parts of the budget that really nobody wants to touch. If you think about my discussion of the social construction of target populations, that the advantage of the groups that are viewed positively but also have a great deal of political power, the elderly are that they’re viewed positively and they have a great deal political power. They turn out to vote. They have interest groups, same thing with the military, viewed positively and are politically engaged. And so these advantage groups get a greater share of the budget because they politicians realized, Look, this is the group we have to protect or if not have to protect. We have to take their interest into concern O. R. Or else that it will be harmful, and this how democracy works groups that are mobilized are able to more effectively get their issues. Representative.

[0:19:48 Speaker 1] Okay, we’ve got a couple a couple of interesting topics with respect to civil rights and definitions of rights is a theme that’s been consistent throughout the semester. And, you know, we keep seeing it come up in the news. So you’ve got a couple things you got Native American farmers and then something about Texas schools and rights Visa be there. So what elaborate on those Those two topics.

[0:20:09 Speaker 0] So the 1st 1 is that the Native Americans apartment settled a suit in 2010 with the federal government in which they found the federal government actually taking part in discriminatory practices regarding loans to Native American farmers for close to 20 year period. And the settlement, if I remember correctly, was 606 $180 million. However, for those who could there only a certain number of individuals who were actually able to make successful claims. That was about, um, that took about little over half of it. Uh, but so there’s 266 million left over, and so this is now being spread out to a variety of nonprofits that try to help out in terms of paying for education services, even even training in Native American Native American population to try to help the Native American agricultural businesses. And so this is in many ways a Web understanding of how groups will challenge the way they’ve been treated by the government. But one thing that this points out is that it’s a little bit messier than we think. One is that the, uh, acutely accusation discrimination took place from about 1981 to 1999. The decision in their favour will didn’t come out until 2010. There are a variety of appeals. Before the money was handed out and I would think about it was the only people who got a portion the money where those were able to make successful claims. And so there’s a lot that goes into this on, and now the left over money will get. Now go to non profits, but it’s been very made very clear, but not profits cannot use it for policy making. They can just for lobbying things of that nature. That was one of the concerns that individuals had, but it’s again pointed to the long drawn out process in this and that even though people say, Oh, they won, it’s not really clear who want expression the class action suit of who will get a piece of those funds.

[0:22:07 Speaker 1] Yeah, I had to have ah, brief observation on this particular case when we were talking about the modern civil rights movement. That is the struggle for African American civil rights in the 19 forties, fifties and the sixties, even into the seventies and supposed, um, you we talked about different strategies and employing different strategies and whether those strategies were in fact, if we have had you guys in and given you kind of a traditional test U S a test one of things I would have loved to have asked is, you know, talk about the extent to which these strategies are still relevant today. Legalism, nonviolent direct action, you know, black Power. And it’s interesting that the legal ist strategy, which was really kind of the first Tim poorly, that is the sequentially was the 1st 1 that was adopted by the modern civil rights movement and ultimately proved kind of frustrating to people want to push harder and more with more rapidity for civil rights. This still, I think, is the dominant strategy that’s employed by groups that are striving for civil rights today. You know, whether it’s, ah, you know, the LGBT community. Whether it’s Native Americans that disabled that, you know, we still you know, there’s still a nemesis on political rights and political power. There are groups that that, you know, want Teoh, you know, establish more of a kind of self sufficiency and emphasize, you know, kind of doing things for themselves. Ah, and then there are, you know, political protests. Obviously nonviolent direct action. But man, the legal, this strategy has had legs. It still has, however, same kind of limitations we talked about early in the semester. It is expensive. It takes a long time. The victims have to bear the burden of the action. And so it’s interesting to see, you know, Native American communities still pursuing this legal strategy. I’m certainly not critical of it. I think it’s the most obvious strategy that you would pursue. But it does come with some frustrations in limits.

[0:24:03 Speaker 0] Oh, yeah, very much so. On. The last thing we want to talk about is actually deals with Texas, and this is a Amberleigh Tatreau who passed away this week and she is famous before suing the Urban. I think the school board in Irving, Texas, over basically certain types of treatment or health treatment. So Miss Tatreau had a variety of ailments, the variety of surgeries, and because of this, she had a catheter need to be changed several times a day of school refused to do it, saying that it opened up a Pandora’s box that now will be taking part in a bunch of different medical procedures. On May and the family sued the school district and the family, one with the Supreme Court ruled there’s dentistry, medical procedures and health procedures. And so because of this, she was able to attend school at 10 public school and provide these services. And so it’s important, understand that many of the services that we see public schools providing today are the result of the result of these of these cases where people saying look in order for me to receive a proper education, received certain things. I you know, you have to make certain immense for me, and so whether that be, um, handicap access, whether it be certain services pursued with certain disabilities. The idea is that people are making this kind of push for, you know, if I’m if this is a public service, I should be allowed to have access to this. Now. Was important to note is that many of the people who are against charter schools our ah point of these things that because charter schools are different there to this kind of private entities, they do not have to follow the same guidelines as the public schools. And so in many cases, the charter schools are able to keep students with certain disabilities out because, they say, because of certain expenses and things, that nature, it’s a wonder. Fears that the growth of charter schools may actually lead to student with certain disabilities being left with nowhere to go.

[0:26:01 Speaker 1] Yeah, when I saw this article fresh from Daniel brought to my attention, Uh, the first thing I thought of was the distinctions that we’ve raised. His distinctions, I guess, elements of the public policy cycle. This is again one of your lecture modules on the question of domestic policy, and you know the extent to which problems are private versus public, um, and how that process gets negotiated in American politics. And it’s interesting is professors at the University of Texas, you know, we kind of deal with some of these issues all the time. You know, student has, ah, learning disability. To what extent is it the responsibility of, in this case, the University of Texas, right. The the extension of the government, we don’t. I sometimes think of ourselves that way. But we’re a public university. Get some public funds. Not as much as people think sometimes, but, um so you know, when we acknowledge that it is our responsibility to provide accommodations for somebody who has, let’s say, attention deficit disorder or something like that, Um, that’s interesting. You know, 25 or 30 years ago, that was considered a you problem. That was your responsibility. That was it was the individual’s responsibility to, you know, suck it up and, you know, figure out how to deal with it, how to compete in a university environment. But over the course of time, you know, there was some negotiation. Well, what does that make sense? There are lots of people with this problem. It’s a publican isn’t it the responsibility of the university to make some sort of accommodate? And these sorts of issues occur all the time. And in the in the case of the Irving student, you know, what was interesting, I think, was the extent to which you got negotiated over a single case very quickly. You know, to what extent is the, you know, the public school responsible for providing medical as opposed to health services? So that was the distinction the court raised that if it’s a medical situation, then it becomes a public issue and the public entity is obliged to provide an accommodation. Right? If it had been ah, health concern or classified as a health issue, then the burden would have been mawr on the individual. And we’re still insist society negotiating these things all the time, right? Is education OK? We’ve decided that’s a public issue. All right, Well, once he gets on the public docket, then the question is, Well, what is the state obliged to provide In what form? How much spending, what particular programs? What’s the feedback loop? You know, it’s something get reauthorized by Congress. That whole entire cycle that we talked about kicks in, but something has to get on the agenda first. And you know some of the things we think about today as being public. We’re certainly not considered public 25 30 certainly 100 years ago. On the other hand, there stuff right now that we think of his private, who knows what we’ll think of it in 25 or 30 years, right? Things that we think of as well. That’s really my problem, not you tease. You know, maybe in 25 or 30 years will be a very different, different, different definition of what’s public and what the university is obliged to provide. The students right university obliged to provide a way to get you to campus every day. Transportation, food, health care, these things, they’re all you know, Is this really part of the public responsibility University has? Maybe, you know, it’s a dynamic thing and a fluid thing, in part of the joy of watching politics, is watching these things get negotiated and figure with government constantly in society, I guess, to American society constant trying to figure out what’s public and where out the government to provide something versus what’s the obligation of citizens and individuals on their own. Okay, so that’s that’s giving that particular issue of a grander context, I suppose. But that’s what we really want to do with this class is take the singular issues and kind of loop them back to government and these bigger picture issues. So I got nothing else. Yeah, I think that’s it for May be mission impossible yet?

[0:29:57 Speaker 0] No, not yet.

[0:29:58 Speaker 1] All right. What about Incredibles?

[0:29:59 Speaker 0] I have been horrible when it comes to movies of summer.

[0:30:02 Speaker 1] Okay, Okay. I saw Ant Man and wasp. That’s good. That’s good. I still

[0:30:07 Speaker 0] you know, I can’t

[0:30:08 Speaker 1] believe like Infinity War and Black Panthers this year. It feels like, like, 10 years ago. The way you know, the Marvel universe is up. But did see those two? Yeah. On this class, we move like the Marvel universe. We move seamlessly forward with new blockbusters basically coming out every other couple weeks.

[0:30:24 Speaker 0] That’s right. And it all makes sense in time

[0:30:27 Speaker 1] eventually. All right, for that, I’m fan knows

[0:30:29 Speaker 0] and I’m good. More. See

[0:30:32 Speaker 1] you next