GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, July 27, 2016

In the news.

Hello, I’m Professor Shaw. And I’m Professor McDaniel. Welcome to IN THE NEWSROOM, American and Texas government.

So it’s been a week, right? Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of things going.

Also today, we’re going to discuss the kind of the end of the Republican National Convention

and then we’ll talk about the early days. The Democratic National Convention will move more kind of to specific policy

issues, specifically what we’re seeing in Gaza through the bomb registration and health insurance companies. Also,

the court’s ruling regarding Texas voter I.D. laws, considering this is campaign

season in some of the complexities with that and my gold medal picks for the upcoming Olympics.

That’s right. All right. So again, Rio is only a few weeks away. Don’t

drink the water. Please don’t go. Yeah. So

let’s start off with the RNC we talked about a little bit last week, specifically focusing on kind of the gaffe

you had with the plagiarism of a speech. But, you know, think these things happen,

but there’s still some more controversy. And really the big controversy was with our old senator Ted

Cruz and his unwillingness to endorse Donald Trump.

Let’s roll that clip to protect our God given rights,

even of those with whom we don’t agree. So that when

we are old and gray. And when our work is done

and we give those we love one final kiss goodbye.

We will be able to say freedom matters.

And I was part of something beautiful.

The case we have to make to the American people the case.

Each person in this room has to make to the American people is to

commit to each of them, that we will defend freedom and

be faithful to the Constitution.

We will unite the party, we will unite the country by standing together

for shared values, by standing for liberty. God bless

each and every one of you. And God bless the United States of America.

So when you say God bless and everybody figures out he’s done

and he has not endorsed the nominee. That’s when you get the cascade of boos. So

it’s a little bit of an irony or an interesting juxtaposition here between the Republican the Democratic

conventions and the you know, Ted Cruz got booed for not endorsing Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders and others got booed for endorsing Hillary Clinton. So I’m not quite sure

what you can do as a losing candidate to come off very well. But, you

know, yeah, I mean, it’s also the timing is a little bit weird because I think this was on the third day before

the convention, whereas the Democrats, they got all that out the first day.

And so it was kind of weird, like we were going along, going along. Oh, Ted Cruz, come in. So this is kind of seen as,

OK. Let’s. Finally, get the U.N. to go on then. Ted Cruz doesn’t do it.

I mean, again, he makes. He makes a speech and clearly he’s pivoting for twenty twenty

or twenty, twenty four. But it’s clear he wants to make it make. He wants to stand

out with his speech. Well you know, look, I’ll let you know a little bit of inside baseball

here. I mean a lot of this is floor management. All right. So what you see in the Republican convention

is Professor McGann McDaniel mentioned this is day three that Ted Cruz is speaking to the to the convention crowd, I think

was day three of a day to think was day three. And at that point, you know, the the

K-6 supporters, all 15 of them, the Cruz supporters, have basically left. There’s not that many

of them to begin with. The place is dominated by supporters of the nominee. You know, Donald Trump. So

the places is crackling with people who have an allegiance and affinity for Donald Trump. And so Ted Cruz gets

up there and gives, you know, what he and his supporters probably think is an intellectually honest speech, you

know, saying vote your conscience as opposed to, you know, vote for Donald Trump. And that’s just not

going to go over very well on the Democratic side. The problems he had on Monday morning, the first day of the speech,

were because the Sanders supporters had kind of worked their way down to the front

of the stadium in Philadelphia, the arena in Philadelphia, and were protesting

and yelling and getting a lot of airtime. But by Monday night, by the time Michelle Obama and others spoke,

those people had been cleared out. They had been induced, cajoled.

Use your verb of preference or choice. But they’ve gotten them the heck off of center stage,

moved them up a little bit, so that by the time the primetime speeches were on speeches between,

you know, I guess 7:00 o’clock Central Time and 9:00 Central Time, they were kind of out. So I

think that the floor management dynamics are as important here as anything else. There’s a lot of talk and we’ll get into this about

the Democratic convention, about how the delegates were turned by the words of Michelle

Obama. Michelle Obama gave a wonderful speech. You don’t convince Bernie supporters, you know, hey,

you know what? I really do like Hillary. That did not happen. What happened was mechanically,

those people were moved to the rafters so they weren’t going to mess up the Democrats optics on the Monday

night. But I’m not I love persuasion and speeches, but let’s be real

here. So bear it. The curse. I don’t know. You know, to Professor Dan’s

point, about twenty twenty or twenty twenty four. I don’t think that speech hurts him in Texas.

You know, I don’t think it really does much damage to him nationally. In fact, if Trump

goes down in flames, you know, people might look back on that kind of favorably stood up before a convention

and refuse to endorse a guy he didn’t believe in. You know, who knows?

Yeah. I mean, the issue is this isn’t part of the problem he has is that people been arguing

that Trump is not a true conservative. And Ted Cruz is really saying, look, to really move

this nation forward. There are certain ideals we need to uphold. And these are the ideals I’m going

to uphold. Donald Trump may not uphold them as well as I would like so I can endorse. Some of that is also

personal part about this. I mean, the man went after his wife and his father and the

kids and crew and his kids. And so it it got personal. And it wasn’t,

you know, like said, I don’t like he was Ted. Don’t like you. I don’t like your wife. I’m like your kids. I’m like

your daddy. I don’t like your dog. I don’t like your dogs, mom. I mean, it got like real

personal. And that’s an end. The problem was, instead of.

Trump kind of backing down from that. After all of this, he reiterated. Yeah, I think is the

actual JFK, he was like, no. Like, just just let it go. And that

became kind of a that was a big issue. I mean, and you know, and make basically, I’m not gonna be bullied

into this. I’m not going to support somebody who goes after my family, you know? So think

of me as the Liam Neeson of the Republican Party. Yeah. It’s it’s, you

know, sort of the farseeing dynamic. You don’t see it very often. It’s kind of funny. I heard a line that I thought was pretty good, which

is, you know, typically we think of these conventions as being, you know, reality TV.

But of course, they’re not they’re sort of prepackaged and planned by. Well, have a problem with that.

You know, I don’t think it’s ridiculous every four years to allow the political parties to make their case directly

to the American people. I don’t know. I don’t have a fear of being manipulated at parties or communicating or trying

to put on their best face. Doesn’t bother me. That’s happening. But but that prepackaged

element in sort of veneer to these conventions, which has been dominant really for the last 30, 40 years,

this one really was a reality show. You know, I don’t think Trump’s people had a tight

control over it. I don’t know how you have tight control over Trump anyway. I was stunned

during his speech, which we’ll get to in a second. That he was able to actually read the speech. I

just assumed he was going to go robe three or four or five times over the course of that thing.

So, you know, I guess kudos to him for doing that. But, you know, I don’t know people. I don’t know if they objected,

but people sort of commented about it was rough. And they’re the sort of Wild West element to it.

It’s funny. That’s what the networks are always clamoring for. But when they get it, they talk about how it’s

evidence that, you know, there’s a sensible course, there’s dissension and lack of control. And, you know, so

I don’t know, watching the Democratic Republican conventions, it sort of strikes me that you’re damned if you do, damned

if you don’t. If you’re to control. They don’t like that. If you’re kind of rough around the edges and things happen.

Well, that’s not good either. You know, who knows what it’s like when Heraldo

had that final here show. Everybody condemned it, but then everybody started watching her world. Lost it

in the numbers for the Trump speech or were off the charts. It’s it’s the most viewed convention

speech in history. My guess is it will get more eyeballs than Hillary Clinton’s speech will

this coming week, even though that’ll be a, you know, a well-watched speech as well.

You know, it was something. So we got we do have some clips of The Donald or clip of the Donald speech.

So so here are some excerpts from Donald Trump’s speech. Hey, I take

the oath of office. Americans will finally wake up

in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced.

Donald Trump had delegate to the Republican National Convention on their feet roaring in an

emotional speech pitched as much of the audience at home as those in the arena

say. USA. USA. Trump laid out a laundry list of things

he wants to do, but first things first. He said he wants to make people feel safe and the

crime and violence on our streets beginning on January 20th of

That’s the day the next president takes the oath of office. And when Trump stressed safety, he also meant

safety from terrorism. He blamed Democrat Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of

state, for the spread of ISIS after four years of Hillary Clinton.

Why do we have death, destruction, terrorism

and weakness? Let’s defeat her. In November, Trump offered

a plan to protect the nation from terrorism. We must have the best,

absolutely the best gathering of talent, intelligence anywhere

in the world. We must work with all of our allies who share our

goal of destroying ISIS and stamping out Islamic

terrorism and doing it now. That’s actually a plan

for the safety you’re defeating ISIS. But, you know, gathering intelligence

and working with allies, I guess that’s the broad contours of a plan. So Trump’s law

and order candidate. You know, it’s interesting to watch the two conventions side by side

or, you know, back to back and see the different emphases. Right. The Republicans have

Trump in particular talked about on the law and order candidate. I’m going to defend you from ISIS.

Right. Sort of intuiting that this is the top thing that people are concerned about. This is what the

focus needs to be in the campaign. Whereas if you watch the Democratic convention, I think on Monday night, Trump

tweeted this, you know, there was not a single mention of ISIS. You know, the Democratic convention

has been mostly about bringing people together, moving forward together. The country’s

not in that bad of shape. So it’s two very different tones to

this. And the main criticism of Trump’s speech in the Republican convention that I discern

was that it was too dark, that it was too negative, and sort of painted

a picture of America in crisis. And you know, that that disturbs some of the pundits,

people who thought that that wouldn’t work well or would not resonate with voters. But I guess it’s a matter of interpretation,

right? I mean, who who’s got a better sense, who’s got their finger on the pulse of the country right now? Is is

is it the Republicans and Trump who’ve, you know, are counting on the fact that people are afraid?

People are kind of angry. People are not happy. Or is it the Democrats who seem

to think that, well, you know, there’s some anxiety, but mostly people think we’re moving in the right direction and they’re offering,

you know, kind of a more optimistic take on how things are going. Yeah, I mean, listen to that.

The thing about it is if the Democrats, they want to say now things are going well because you got a Democratic

president in office. So you’re like, oh, God, the world’s going to hell. And it’s like, but he was

the president of your the president from your party. Let me just your fault. So you can’t you can’t really

say, I don’t know the things that things are going well, you know, whereas if you want change, you do that. So if you think about

Obama in 2008, I mean, his was he was very critical,

like here’s what we’re doing wrong. Here’s what we’re doing wrong and all these different places, you know, whereas I think McCain

was still was critical because he wasn’t part of the administration. But he also wasn’t going to, you know, say, oh, no,

no, we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. And so part of it is, you know, when you want to bring a new party

and you got to make the old party look horrible, and this and this makes this makes sense. And again, there

probably can be disagreements between Obama and Clinton on a lot of things we’re seeing with the TPP.

There are differences there. But for the most part, they don’t know where

we’re heading in the right direction. And I’m going to keep that going. You saw the same thing with Gore in 2000.

You saw the same thing with Bush, one after after Reagan that, you know,

the idea that we keep things going. I think things are going well. Whereas everybody else is preaching gloom

and doom. However, I think we can argue that Trump is a little more heavy handed in his gloom

and doom than others have been in the past. I think that’s right. Just a couple points. Differences. You know, if we’re talking about historical analogies,

the one that I kept thinking of is 1968. And people talked about,

you know, this summer as being in some ways analogous to 1960. I don’t think it’s quite that

revolutionary apology to Bernie Sanders. But, you know, in 1968, you had

Hubert Humphrey running as kind of the heir to the Johnson administration, which had, you know, these sort of

terrific domestic policy successes, you know, an active civil rights record, but was handling

an unpopular war. Johnson wasn’t running for reelection. Humphrey was kind of the heir to the throne.

And Richard Nixon came along and was talking about being the representative, the silent majority

and the law and order candidates, you know, and so was was appealing directly, those sorts of voters

who were uncomfortable with these sorts of rebellions in the streets, riots,

you know, actions against the police. You know, the disorder that a lot of people thought

was going on. So I lost sixty eight strikes me has been coming. And that, of course, turned out to be an extremely close election

with Nixon just edging Humphrey by a point and half. We may be headed kind of in a direction

like that on the notion of sort of points and, you know, margins. I would point out

that the preliminary polling evidence suggests that Trump got a modest but

statistically real bounce. You know, it’s not just noise in the polls. He did seem to get a bump

from his convention bump, meaning an increase in his standing in the polls. It’s not clear exactly

where the race is right now. Everybody shows at pump that Trump improved his standing.

But some of those polls, for instance, show that he was down eight and now he’s tied. Well, that’s a bump,

but you’re tied. And the Democrats have had their chance here. Others showed he was down two or three and now

he’s up two or three, which again, is a bump that actually takes him into the lead.

You know, my guess, reading an aggregation of the polls is that Trump’s up a point or two right now.

But I think that’s meaningless until the end of the Democratic convention when Hillary’s had her chance

and we can kind of see where the race stands. You know, I think that race will probably be pretty much frozen.

So beginning next week, when you see polls coming out, if they show Hillary up a couple points,

I think he can probably take it to the bank. She’s going to be up a point or two on Labor Day, which is when the real general

election campaign begins. Same with Trump. If Trump is up. That race will probably frozen because

the Olympics are happening. Football starts, school starts. People pay a little less attention to politics.

The candidates themselves aren’t as active. And so. So I think that’s probably the state of the

race. One last comment, though, about, you know, Professor McDaniel mentions exactly right.

And respect to the Democrats painting the sort of rosier picture. You know, traditionally

we think of the kind of campaign that Hillary Clinton’s going to run is been again, using historical

analogy compared to the Morning in America campaign that Ronald Reagan ran when he was running for

reelection, 1984. Right. That we had turned the corner. Things were going well and it was tight.

It was important to stay the course, to consolidate the gains that had been made. You know,

I’ve I’ve got a little bit of a question about whether that works for Democrats as well as it does for Republicans.

There’s something about the Democratic Party, its coalition, the elements of that party, which include

racial, ethnic minorities. You know, people, disabilities, people of different sexual orientations

that coalition, I think is less amenable, less receptive to the argument

that things are going great. You know, we’ve turned the corner. Everything is fine. America

is wonderful. There’s something. You know, the Republican Party seems more comfortable with that kind of rhetoric

than the Democratic Party, which oftentimes involved is involved putting together a coalition of people

who have historically been disadvantaged. So I wonder about a, you know, a Morning

in America campaign. You know, when your coalitions when your coalition really

has serious grievances still with, you know, the way things have gone historically in the

United States, that’s speculation on my part. But I think it’s kind of be kind

of interesting to watch this play out. Yeah, I mean, I guess one way you can interpret is it could be worse. All right.

Keep us here or gets worse. It’s not great now, but it could be

much worse if Trump gets in there. And that’s kind of the rudder people are going with. It’s you

have a bunch people’s MITCHARD. How many times Hillary Clinton’s name was mentioned?

You know, not Trump, but when the RNC was like, OK, yeah. He may not be the best, but at least he’s not Hillary

Clinton. And I think Hillary Clinton at times trying to win over the Bernie supporters by saying, hey, I’m not Trump,

but we’ll have to see how this all plays out. Now, moving

on to the DNC, we got some we got some important news this week.

Hillary Clinton picked her vise presidential candidate. Who was it? It was Cain.

Cain? That’s right. And so as you see, you see pictured here, this is what I originally

thought it was. And I thought it was you know, I thought it was Hillary Clinton, Big Daddy Kane.

That would be a bold pick. That’s bold pick cotton. That’s what I was. That’s what I was hoping for. So

those of you are familiar with Big Cain. Let me give you a little bit a taste of what your vise president should have

been.

With this city of late nights and

drops of Smoove lyrics 88, Tom set a straight non-slave.

I’m ready to step in. He didn’t want to change

the outcome. They can’t.

That’s what I was in college when life was good. Yes. Yes. But

no, we were wrong. She chose Tim Kaine. So who is Tim

Kaine, you ask? Well, I have some information for you. So he’s a former governor of Virginia

and he’s currently in the Senate representing Virginia. Now, Kaine sticks

out because he’s never lost an election, so he’s undefeated

in political campaigns. There is Trump, as it turns out, that this will won’t become when he ran

in 2000. Well, but one of the things about

him that that hurts him is that he is not a darling of the extreme left. So Bernie

Sanders supporters weren’t so happy about because he’s much more moderate. Furthermore, he’s

showing tepid support for the TPP, but is actually backed off of that. And he’s

not been so supportive of regulating banks, specifically the small banks and credit unions. And so because

of that, because of his Wall Street ties, he’s been questioned. But addition to that, he

he is he’s much like Joe Biden since that he’s talked about he’s personally opposed to abortion.

And as governor of Virginia, he actually made ex put some laws in place to try to

necessarily make abortions more difficult. But medical procedures, he did abstinence only sex

education, but removed that when he found that studies found that it was not effective.

What? Since he’s been in the Senate, though, he has actually been very supportive of

of approach. Pro-Choice groups

shows you and shows you how early I got up this morning talking to the pro-choice groups.

So he’s actually been very liberal on that, even though he’s personally against that. Also, he’s

opposed the death penalty. And that was one of the big things in his running for governor is he said, personally, I’m opposed to the death

penalty. But there are still 11 executions while he was governor. It did not

stop that. He said, look, I’m here to uphold the law. I will uphold the law. And so because of that, he’s kind of an interesting,

interesting figure. People paint him as being boring. And Hillary Clinton.

That’s good. Given the controversy she’s had. Boring. You taste fabulous right now.

Yeah. I think the contrast between Cain and Trump, I think is what she’s going after. You know,

it used to be that vise presidential candidates were almost exclusively chosen because of

their state affiliations. The idea was you would John Kennedy chose Lyndon Johnson because he thought

Johnson would help him carry Texas, which he did. You know, this was, in fact, the case

up until probably I think 1992 might be the year in which it really changed when Bill

Clinton was a young Southern kind of moderate governor, chose Al Gore,

who at that point, before he started growing a beard and traveling on Southwest Airlines, was also a young,

moderate Southern governor. And so instead of, you know, from Tennessee.

So instead of going for someone to balance the ticket or bring a particular state,

he doubled down on, you know, his his calling card, his credentials as president. Right. George

W. Bush picked Dick Cheney from the, you know, awesomely powerful state of Wyoming. No offense to

my Wyoming friends out there in 2000. It wasn’t to bring Wyoming into the fold. It was because

Cheney brought gravitas, experience and foreign policy. You know, that Bush needed

when he’s running for president. So so here now, this is a little, little bit of a throwback

in the sense that I think Hillary does want help in Virginia. It’s a key battleground state.

Kaine is popular in Virginia. I’m a little skeptical that Kaine helps her carry

Virginia. I think she either carries Virginia or loses it on her own. But that is certainly a plus.

There’s a little bit strategic in size. Professor McDaniel suggested here if she did go with Big Daddy Kane,

that’s that’s a roll the dice. Right. That suggests, you know, she has to mobilize a group appeal to millennials

or Gen X to get that Xers actual people who are big in 80s

pop. Yeah, but she doesn’t do that. She goes with the sort of white moderate,

you know, a popular governor. So to me, that reveals she’s pretty confident about where

she stands. Right. She didn’t go with the Hooli on Castro. You know, she didn’t go with an Elizabeth Warren

or Bernie Sanders. You know, it seems to me that she her reading of the race right

now is she’s got a little bit of a lead. She’s going to play it safe. She’s going to play a conservative.

You know, and then, by the way, I think that’s probably an accurate read on the race, although a female

drops, keep coming out. Who knows what’s going to happen. Yeah. We’ll get to that in just a second, because.

Oh, what a way to make it make a mess

out of this. We want to go to Debbie. We’ll go to Debbie is sick. But I guess one thing I want to point out is everybody’s upset

about. Not bringing in Elizabeth Warren and others like that is more than you have to realize is that

Elizabeth Warren is the kind of person on the loudspeaker yelling and screaming,

sitting out these tweets. A trump card of the of the progressives. If she moves,

become vise president, vise president candidate. Well, the problem is she moves into the administration in many ways that

actually muzzles her because she has to work with the administration. So because because she can stand on the outside

and yell at me, people like she can stand outside, yell and scream. But the problem

is she moves into the administration. She can’t do that anymore, because now she has to uphold the administration.

And so, yes, day there’s a tradeoff here. Furthermore, you don’t want to pull people out that have

powerful positions that can help you get things done in Congress. So you don’t want to take somebody who’s making the deals.

Everything like that out because who’s going to replace them? And so there’s a strategy there

in terms of who would be a good vise presidential pick. But also, you know, who can I

pull out of Congress that does not weaken the

strength of my party or my bill to get things done when I’m in there. So it’s it’s a strategic thing. But also,

those of you like Elizabeth Warren and like Elizabeth Warren is doing. You don’t want her to become vise president because

she can’t do those things anymore. Professor Regales, he’s a policy guy. I’m a elections guy.

He’s talked about the policy implications of getting Warren out of the Senate, for instance, into a V.P. position.

I’ll go to the political side of that, which is you’re forfeiting a Democratic seat. Now it’s Massachusetts. They probably

elect a Democrat. There’s a Democratic governor with the extra Republican governor at this point

in Massachusetts. So. So it would it would be a Republican replacing

Elizabeth Warren. And then that person would have a leg up. So you lose the seat in the Senate and there’s a close battle for the

Senate right now. You know, I think, you know, the Burtis,

the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren speeches on Monday night at the convention, which we’ll talk about

here in a second. You know, we’re very interesting and we’ll talk about those. I actually happen to think Elizabeth Warren

is overrated as a politician. I think Bernie Sanders is a little overrated as a politician. People

gonna hate me for that. But if you actually look at the speech, I mean, Elizabeth Warren lost to Scott

Brown in Massachusetts, a very liberal state. You know, I’m much quite

sure how effective she actually is at making the case that Hillary Clinton wants to make

in the fall. I think she’s probably better as a as a second tier surrogate as opposed to a V.P. pick. But

I’ve been wrong about this stuff before. Speaking of people who may not be the best surrogates, do we want to roll

the Austrian show? Let’s see what happened on their way to Philadelphia

today when just hours after calling for the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz,

she announced she’ll resign following the Democratic National Convention. This after leaked emails

suggested party officials were mocking the Vermont senator. The emails reportedly went as far to consider

using Sanders religious beliefs against his campaign and show top DNC officials using their

efforts to aid Clinton. Sanders was disappointed by the emails, but said he wasn’t surprised

as he warned a long time ago. The DNC wasn’t running a fair operation, he added. A function

of the DNC is to represent all of the candidates and to be fair and even minded. shelties resignation

comes one day before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia begins.

So Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who’s head of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Party,

was roundly booed when she tried to address a preliminary meeting. She resigned,

but said while resigning. But I’ll give up my seat after the convention. She said she

was gonna gavel the convention open and didn’t go over real well. She was absolutely

know, mercilessly booed by Bernie Sanders and other supporters of different

candidates and factions in the party. And she had to resign immediately. She was replaced by Donna Brazile,

who is a longtime Democratic operative whose credentials are really in field organization.

You guys may have seen her on CNN and other shows like that. A very classic,

you know, looking black lady with beautiful hair. I can listen to her read the phone book. She’s actually various.

She’s got that silver hair down. Yeah. Know she’s got a good look and a good feel. And immediately

what what Brazil did was immediately. Well and apologized. Not only collectively, she took responsibility

as head of the DNC. She apologized to all the Sanders supporters for what had what had gone down

and then started calling up Sanders supporters and individually apologizing to them. So a lot of damage control,

I think, from what I’ve heard, very effective damage control by Donna Brazil in the aftermath. So what happened?

Well, WikiLeaks struck again. WikiLeaks dumped a whole series of

emails from the Democratic National Committee that were sent out over the course of the primary

process. Many of them indicating that people at the Democratic National Committee. Now didn’t like Bernie

Sanders, but were kind of actively looking to obstruct Bernie Sanders and his campaign.

Where do the leaks come from? A lot of rumors out there that the Russians hacked and. The DNC

system and the Russians provided these emails to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks denies

that the Russians are the source, although they don’t really want to get too into it, because if they start denying

person X, Y and Z, it might mean that person A becomes a parent.

The Democrats picked up on the Russia angle and said, are the Russians

right? Want Donald Trump to be president? So the Russians hacked the DNC

Web site and infrastructure at the Web site there. Their communications network

took these out, held them until this point, and then released them right before

the Democratic convention to embarrass Hillary Clinton, to pave the way so that Donald and Putin

could work together in a way that would advantage Russia. I’m going to diagram

this later on my Maddin telestrator, but this story got picked up quite

a bit. So part of the controversy is about the democratic process, Democratic

Party process being unfair. And Sanders saying, see, I told you it was rigged.

Look at these emails. And another part of the controversy is, hey, man, the Russians are

pretty good at this. By the way, if this is true and not not say that, I believe

two things. I believe the Russians did this because I grew up in the rocky 4

era. When this is what the Russians did, but that the Russians have this kind of insight

into the American political process, I’m a little dubious about that. Maybe

they want Donelle out Kwinto. Why they want Donelle over Hillary. But OK, that part of it.

I’m a little confused about so. Well, Assange, actually, the founder of WikiLeaks,

actually admitted that he e waited about six weeks to release them. He wanted to. You want to have some

timing because he didn’t what? He didn’t like Hillary Clinton because he saw Hillary Clinton’s one, the

people going after him for the WikiLeaks. And so he like I don’t know what I would get with Donald

Trump, but I normally get with Hillary Clinton. So supposedly Putin doesn’t like Hillary Clinton

either. Yeah, right. That she’s he thought that she meant that the

United States and Hillary in particular meddled in one of his election pits, although

I didn’t actually know he was really elected. But I mean, it’s funny because

last time I checked, he keeps stepping down from positions but still stays in power.

So it changes the constitution so that whatever position he’s in is a position of power,

which is, you know. Yes. I think bigger change when he goes to whoever’s in charge of the DMV is

in charge of everything. I mean, again, if you if you watch those Russians driving videos,

whoever’s in charge of the DMV, they might need a new one. But one thing

I guess that sticks out about this is that Julian Assange is try to say, no, I’m just here for the truth. Is any other I’m just

I’m a victim in all of this. But he’s openly stated, no, I’m using this as a weapon, you know, to

go after people who I think are against my answer. So he loses some level of he lose

some credibility there. Now, let’s move back to the actual convention and

the fallout from this. And so what you saw within the first days and attempt to try to bring everybody together

and you saw from where’s Bernie supporters going out and trying to do this. So one particular

person, a person in particular is comedian Silver Sarah Silverman, who made the following

statement. I will vote for Hillary with gusto.

As I continue to be inspired and moved to action by the ideals

set forth by Bernie, who will never stop fighting for. I

am proud to be a part of Bernie’s movement. And a vital part of that movement

is making absolutely sure that Hillary Clinton is our next president of the United States.

Are probably.

To the Bernie or bust people. You’re being ridiculous.

OK. So you say two two things going on there. One,

bad timing because you had here the breakup cut off my speech. Now we have a stretch.

That should have been picked up on the mike. But it’s very clear that timing wasn’t right. To

Sarah Silverman was saying, look, I supported Bernie. I’m willing to support, you know, and

I guess the arguments of Sarah Silverman says you’re ridiculous. It might be something wrong here. So

it’s an interesting attempt to do this on the first. Now, again, as FACA pointed out, it calm

down, but really what was going on as they were positioned in the place where the cameras could pick them up easily

as the night went on? They got moved back to where the cameras couldn’t pick him up

as the California delegation was really out of control, which is ironic because California voted

for Hillary Clinton. So presumably the majority of delegates from California were for Clinton,

but it was the California Bernie supporters who were just, you know, rocking the house and they kept moving

the California delegation further and further back. Well, I like I liked Al

Franken’s attempt to turn a Bernie chant into a Hillary is Bernie Bernholz as Hillary is

like, no, that’s Bernie. I was listening pretty carefully. It was not a Hillary chant. And

there’s something about apparently if your initials are SS, so you’ve got Sarah Silverman, Susan Sarandon,

if your initials are SS, apparently you’re really predisposed to support Bernie. This was kind of hailed

as a turning point in the convention. Sarah Silverman dressing down the delegates,

the Bernie supporters. And you know, this is over interpretation as far as I’m concerned.

You know, the idea that Bernie Sanders supporters who are so sort of zealous in their support would say, oh, man, you know,

Sarah Silverman is right on being ridiculous. I need to vote for Hillary.

Come on. You know, that did not happen. What would, of course, logistically happened was

they were vamping up there because Paul Simon wasn’t ready to go on and singing bridge over troubled water,

which, by the way, the only thing they really would’ve worked on Monday night is if Art Garfunkel had come out to sing

that with him, which would have showed reconciliation. Right. Simon and Garfunkel coming together

to sing Bridge Over Troubled Water. You see, I’m bringing this all back home. That would have really

worked. But Paul Simon wasn’t ready to go on. By the way, I love Paul Simon. I saw that bass about

a month and a half ago. It was fantastic. God, it was an awful rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Water.

It’s you know, you need Art Garfunkel there to sing that song. You know, Paul, God bless him. He’s 70 years old.

He shouldn’t sing that song anymore. But, you know, this is what happens sometimes at conventions.

The Democrats notoriously go long on their conventions. And, you know, that’s part

of the charm of the Democratic Party, is they’re never on time. So Al Franken and Sarah Silverman, who are

up there making the case that Donald Trump was unqualified to be president. Al Franken, former SNL cast member who is

now in the Senate making the case that Donald Trump is not qualified to be hold public office. I found kind of ironic,

but I guess it’s the presidency versus the Senate. So. All right. Oh, is this his second term, though?

Right. Al Franken has been around a while and has barely a pretty good reputation in the Senate

for as mayor effect. He’s got a reputation for a decidedly unfunny in the Senate. He’s a very serious guy. Yes.

Now. But all that went on. And then you and

one thing it’s important to note is a lot of people are saying that it wasn’t as controversial as they were making out to be

a small cadre of people. So we’re like they were fistfights breaking out. You had as a small much people

who were able to get in position with the mikes and the cameras could easily see them. And it

wasn’t as cantankerous as the media one to make it out to be. But again, it’s also the first

day. And so what you do the first days, you yell, you scream. And then by the end, like, oh, I love you. I

love you, too. Or you go home. And, you know, I think that’s why the second

day got. Let’s make a comment. Commerce light went on for the shop, not because of logistics. They moved

away. And I think by the second day, I get a little bit calmer because,

you know, I think much more issue focused and, you know, it became

a little more directed. Now, while also we’ll be seen trying to

reconcile this is Bernie Sanders came out the first night and endorsed Hillary

Clinton. So let’s hear what some of us what some of what Senator Sanders comments.

It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues.

That is what this campaign has been about. That is what democracy

is about. But I’m happy to tell you that the Democratic

Platform Committee, there was a significant coming together

between the two campaigns and we produced by far the most

progressive platform and history of the Democratic Party.

All right, so Sanders kind of what he says there is I got what I wanted. You know, I influence

the platform. I got Hillary to take on a set of positions that are consistent with my positions. The

speech was probably pretty much what Hillary wanted. I’m at both a war and I’ll get back to the Warren and

the Sanders speeches, you know, kind of showed some interesting things to me. They show why

I think in some sense I’ve made the case I’m sorry to offend people, that they’re sort of overrated

in some sense because the causes that they champion are passionate and popular.

People sort of assume that they’re, you know, really, really charismatic, telegenic speakers.

They’re really not. You know, Sanders and Warren spend most their speeches Monday night reciting

a list of policy positions that they’re really excited about and committed to. And I don’t I’m not

knocking that. I’m just talking about from kind of an energy standpoint, an optics standpoint. So the

more Bernie’s speech went on, the more you realize it was basically his standard stump speech. You know, break up the banks,

free college, you know, the set of positions that have gotten people really energized about the campaign. But if you’re following

the live tweets, for instance, the reporters, I think everybody’s heard this speech a hundred times. You know, sources.

Oh, this is the standard stump speech. Nothing wrong with that. But, you know, I think the idea that they were going

to electrify the campaign was probably overwrought. And, you know, I mean, there there’s a reason why,

you know, they’re their candidates and Elizabeth Warren’s case, Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders case Vermont, who are appealing to very

liberal constituencies. They do a very good job there. But in terms of capturing the imagination, the nation

like Ted Kennedy in 1980 or Jesse Jackson in 84 or Mario Cuomo or even

Arnold Schwarzenegger a few years back, you know, the other thing I think they followed

Michelle Obama, who gave a very effective, very subtle speech on Monday night,

kind of contrasting, you know, her personal situation, using it to kind of talk

about the country of the difficulties of a of a negative climate.

And really, I think kind of skewering Trump in an indirect but extraordinarily effective way.

I think machine, you know, for me, there was Michelle Obama’s speech on Monday night and then everybody else.

Yeah. I mean, as somebody pointed out, Michelle Obama’s the first person to

speak at the RNC and the DNC in the same year. Well, I guess that’s good

because that indirect those like hot damn. I mean, it was it was it was basically

I mean, it was like an arc, a rap distract, except she didn’t name names. I mean. Right.

So I mean by subtle. Yeah. It was a subtle message. But we knew who she was talking about.

But you it was that and I think this has really been

the way I painted Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as they would be great bureaucrats. They’d be great. You

put them in head of the head of a department or something like that or a game on a point, because they they’re really

into these certain policy areas. But they’re not going to get you excited. They’re not going

to have you ready to go out, you know, and do these things

because they’re there unless you’re really down for the cause. Yeah. It was already on the cause and really know about the issue. You’re

down for it. But they’re not going to they’re policy wonks. And,

you know, Elizabeth Warren was in it was was in law school, you know, so she

is is a policy wonk. She’s not necessarily there to encourage you

to get. And she’s there to encourage you. But she’s like, look, here’s what’s going on. Here’s what I want to do. But she’s

she’s not going to give you that great speech, Hoosiers or from Rocky, you know, or those classic

speeches you get from the football coach before, you know, your rag tag group goes up against the other team

in the state championship. All right. But, you know, she’s more about defensive coordinator

who’s like, stay right here on this play. Do not let the birth containment,

you know. So that’s really the big issue there. Now, moving on

from the DNC, we’ll talk more about the DNC next week as we see Hillary Clinton,

Clinton’s acceptance of the nomination. But also President Obama would have got with his farewell speech, along

with Harry Reid making his final appearance. And we’ll start with the importance of the fact that this is the first

time that a major party has nominated a woman for the presidency. So this is you

know, this is a is an historic event. But let’s actually talk about policy. And there’s

there’s still a lot of policy things going on in particular in regards to health care and health insurance

companies. So we have a clip to show you. And today, I’m announcing that the Department of Justice

is suing to block both Aetna’s acquisition of Humana and Anthem’s acquisition

of Cigna. And with Thursday’s announcement from Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the battle lines

are drawn to stop a massive consolidation in the health insurance sector. The DOJ moving

to block the two megadeals worth a combined 80 billion dollars on the grounds the nation’s

big five insurers would shrink to just three, threatening to push premiums

higher. Reuters Health and pharma correspondent Caroline Humor says even though the DOJ

denies it. There are some on Wall Street who think there’s a whiff of politics at work.

The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services that runs Obamacare

is very worried about competition in the health insurance market. They’re worried that prices are

going up for health care overall for drugs. They want to keep things down, but the insurance

companies aren’t taking this lying down. Aetna and Humana put out a pretty

strongly worded statement saying that they were going to fight this lawsuit. And we’re hearing the same thing from

Anthem and Cigna. So would you see going on here is this is an example

of regulation of where the U.S. government is stepping in to try to control business practices.

And the reason why you see the federal government stepping in here is because they think that the

merger of these companies will affect competition. And so where you have five major players and

the insurance market with these mergers, you’d end up with three. And what is also

important to this is that with these mergers, these companies get a largest share of the

patient population, which means they have a larger share. They have more negotiating powers and they meet

with doctors and hospitals to negotiate rates. And so the fear here

is that because they’ve gained so much power, they can lower rates in terms of lower

payments to hospitals and doctors while the same time increase in premiums. And so

this is kind of a fear of some type of collusion or monopoly to where

you don’t have good competition and like a lack of competition may actually end

up hurting customers. But also in terms of the ACA and the marketplaces that they want,

that they want to set up the marketplaces there for competition. But if you reduce the number of

competitors, it kind of hurts the amount of competition you have. And so this

is what’s what’s going on here. And this is kind of an important policy issue to talk about, because this is an example

of, you know, regulation of government regulation would talk about this more hours to get to

the economic policy module. But this is a prime example of the federal government

stepping in to kind of regulate business, specifically to protect so severely under

the argument that protecting consumers and trying to keep competition very strong.

Now, along with that, we have some other issues, policies they’ve come up with the past week, specifically dealing with Texas.

Yeah, we got a a voter I.D. decision came down. You all are probably aware a couple of years ago, the

Texas state legislature passed a requirement that voters in the state of Texas present a

photo I.D. in order to vote. And it was designed ostensibly to prevent

or to reduce the possibility for voter fraud. That case was immediately challenged. What

you need in Texas is pre-clearance, because Texas is still a suspect jurisdiction suspect’s

state under the Voting Rights Act. So Texas, when they make any change, the voting law has to be pre-cleared

by the Department of Justice. That pre-clearance was denied, which initiated a series of court cases

between Texas and the federal government. The 5th Circuit Court came out with a decision that

basically dinged ruled an acceptable Texas voter I.D.

law. We have a clip, I think, that talks about some of the details. A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday

that Texas has strict voter I.D. law, violates the Voting Rights Act and ordered changes

before the November election. The ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals instructs the lower

court to make changes that fix the discriminatory effect of the 2011 law. But to do

so in a way that disrupts this year’s election season as little as possible. President

Barack Obama’s administration took the unusual step of deploying the weight of the U.S. Justice

Department into the case when it challenged the law, which requires Texas residents to show

one of seven forms of approved ID. The state and other supporters say the Texas

law prevents fraud. Opponents say it discriminates by requiring forms of I.D. that are

more difficult to obtain for low income African-American and Latino voters.

All right. So that’s a little bit about the voter I.D. decision. We’ve got a slide that actually shows under the Texas

state law the acceptable forms of voter I.D. If you’re going to vote on Election Day, you can see there’s seven different

forms, including a driver’s license, but also including passport, military concealed carry,

which you notice is not on the list, government I.D. or student I.D. I actually think sort of

a personal slash professional opinion. If Texas had included a government I.D.,

a student I.D. as part of the acceptable photo I.D., I think this thing might have stood a much better

chance of actually passing legal muster. But anyway, just

a couple of comments on this. Texas has a strict, perhaps the strictest voter I.D.

law. There’s a series of states that have passed voter I.D. laws over the last 10 years, including states like

Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania. Some of them

in the south, some of them north. And as a general matter what, what you’re finding is that the particular

claim the government has raised is something we called disparate impact, and that is that the law will disproportionately

affect at risk populations of one sort or another. So in the case of voter I.D., the argument

is the elderly who oftentimes don’t have a driver’s license anymore, not non-acceptable driver’s license, they have expired

or they don’t drive anymore racial ethnic minorities who are, according to all statistics, slightly

less likely than whites or Anglos to carry a driver’s license. Right. That if

that’s the case, if those groups are less likely to have that form of I.D., they might be less likely to have

one of these seven forms of acceptable I.D. Therefore, they’re more likely to not be able to

vote. Right. That’s that’s the argument the Department of Justice has raised. The other argument,

I think is more kind of tangential and that is but but relevant but sort of off the mark a little bit.

That is that that’s kind of a salute or a legislation in search of a problem.

That is there isn’t a lot of evidence from the political science literature that there is much voter fraud going on.

So what the court ruled is that, in fact, there is a disparate impact. The Texas

that what they asked the lower court to do is to go back and draw up an acceptable solution to this.

So the is kind of kicked back to the lower court. The law itself has been ruled invalid,

but it’s still in place. It’s going to be fixed presumably by November, because that’s what our next

election is by some kind of lower court remedy. And that’s what we’re waiting on right now. So voter

I.D. is kind of in limbo until the lower court chimes in on this. All right. We’ve got one additional

thing we want to talk about that today. The Democrats have talked about unity and talked about

policing. And, you know, I don’t know about you. I was watching the SPRO a couple weeks ago

and saw Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony, a LeBron James, talk about social

issues in a way that, you know, athletes sometimes don’t wear the perhaps the most prominent

athlete. Certainly my generation, Michael Jordan, has oftentimes been kind of criticized

for not being terribly socially active. Michael Jordan with the famous line Republicans

Buy Shoes, too, has been kind of quiet on these things. But Michael Jordan actually has

stepped up for one reason or another, said some things on some issues lately. So, Professor

McDaniel, you’re part of the Jordan generation, right? Yes. Jordan broke my heart. And many

nights I was a Knicks fan of the 90s. Ouch. Yeah. Yeah.

So between Jordan, Hakeem, OJ, I still blame OJ for the Knicks losing in 94.

Starks just couldn’t deal with a deal with the stress. So Michael Jordan, who

again and the reason why Michael Jordan caught a lot of flack for not standing out is in the

late 80s, early 90s, there was a Senate candidate Senate race in North Carolina between

black Democrat Harvey Gantt and white Republican incumbent Jesse Helms.

And there’s a lot of racial tension. And people’s asked for Michael Jordan to kind of look at you, do

something you because you carry a lot of weight in the state. His response as well, will Republicans buy shoes, too? And

it’s kind of it’s seen as like, OK, you don’t want to do anything, but you did see them. When Bill Bradley

ran in 2000, he came out in support of Bill Bradley. And there you see it

going on right now is he’s coming out in support of actions to improve

police community relations. And so he gave a million dollars to the NAACP

Legal Defense Fund. And again, if you move from Professor Shaw’s discussion earlier about various

ways of challenging for rights, the legal strategy, that’s where you see the NAACP

Defense Fund coming into play. So this is the legal strategy and action and supporting that.

But he also gave bonds to a group that was that is specifically focused on improving police

community relations. And so what you have going on here is a major

figure stepping in to support the legal strategy. And since up for

prodding help for legal remedies to what may be seen as police overreach,

but also giving money to an organization that that works with the police to improve these community organa

community relationships. And this has really been one of the big things that’s in really

many ways it’s been changed where it’s no longer an issue of black lives matter versus blue lives matter,

but police community relations. And I think this is the way of the wreckage seeing

out of President Obama’s trying to come try to be a little more centers, even though he clearly identifies with a lot

of red coming out of Black Lives Matter movement. He also is recognizing, you know, the needs of the police

and say we need to work on these relationships. And if you watch the town hall from

couple of weeks ago, it was about how do we improve these relationships and by improving these relationships?

We may be able to stop some of these things, some of these things happening that when the police do used force,

that the public does not automatically assume that there is misuse of force. But then also

you may see a decrease in use of force because the police have a better relationship with the community. These are all

various things and complicated things to deal with as we see

as we see these issues moving forward. So MJ finally chiming in million dollars

to those organizations. I mean, you know, seems like a lot of Miami may not be the Michael Jordan, but

I’m never going to criticize somebody for a million dollar donations. Also negative to me. Adel’s more than I negative.

That’s exactly right. So certainly that’s. That’s the tie. And if you wonder why we’re talking about Michael Jordan’s

Professor Goodell said it’s a really interesting sort of in the broader context of how

these issues, you know, things are changing. Right. There’s an expectation that athletes or celebrities can talk a lot

about. Celebrities today, right? Whether it’s Donald Trump or the major celebrity.

But Sarah Silverman. You know Al Franken in the Senate. You know, this sort of activism on the part of athletes

and then but the particular time that that sort of embrace of a legal strategy or the relevance, I guess, of the legal

strategy as some of these issues come to the fore, I think is really kind of interesting. Yeah. And so these

are, again, important things and make sure we tie this back into the class. We hope you’re enjoying this as

you go along. But that’s all we have for this week. Next week will wrap up with the DNC and talk about some

other issues that come about. Have a good week. Take care.

The government three turn in the News podcast is hosted by doctors Daron Shaw and Eric mcdarby

and it’s produced by the Liberal Arts US Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College

of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.