GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, June 2, 2016

In the news.

Welcome, I’m Professor Shaw. Now, Professor McDaniel, welcome to the news for American and Texas government.

So today we actually have three topics I want to cover. So starting off with the 2016

election again, the election that will never end. I know Hillary Clinton is thinking that.

Then we’ll talk more about Hillary Clinton, simply her trouble with her email server. Again?

Again, she’s not saying our crazy tweets, but, oh, what’s she doing with her server? Then finally, we move on to everybody’s

favorite topic, Obama’s executive actions. Now, again, I know this is titled American and Texas

Government. We’ll get to Texas probably a little bit more next week. But again, we will

mention Texas because and we talk about Obama’s executive actions. Oh, Texas plays a very key role in that.

But I want to start off again with the 2016 election, smooth the primary

and really talk about what we’re seeing taking shape. Well, we kind of thought at this

point that things would be concluded. I mean, you know, I started my class last semester in

the winter and you in January 15, January 20th. And, you know, I just

can’t believe by May, you know, that the Democrats, you know, the two parties that the Democrats would be

the one that we still have a contest waging on and on and on. Hillary Clinton can’t be real thrilled about

this. But, you know, Bernie Sanders is the candidate who won’t go away as the guest you invite for dinner and

doesn’t seem to ever want to leave. We want to talk a little bit, though, as we set this thing up.

Let’s take a step back. Let’s talk about this sort of process generally and then we’ll hone in on some

of the specific elements of it that kind of animate a lot of conversation, a lot of the discussion we’ve been having recently.

So if we go to slide one, let’s start from the very begin. Let’s talk just a few numbers as we set this

thing up. You notice from the slide it has the total number of delegates that you need to nominate. It’s on the Democratic

side, on the Democratic side. So you see the the number that you need is two thousand three hundred and eighty

three delegates. Where does that number come from? You got me. The Democrats

have always had more total delegates than the Republicans. I don’t know why. They just seem to

have no need for more hotel space. I suppose when they’re having their conventions and you’ll notice also

a couple of things. One is that Hillary Clinton, as you look at that sidebar, is very close to the total

that she needs. Right. So she’s pushed well up over twenty two hundred at this point.

She needs twenty three eighty three. And you’ll also know in Bernie Sanders over there to the right.

You know, not doing too bad. He’s over fifteen hundred but he’s well short of the twenty three eighty three that he

needs to win the nomination. You’ll also notice a distinction in the bars. Right. We’ve got

the light blue, the pledged delegates. Those are the those are the delegates. And you actually win

by winning over voters in primaries and caucuses. And then you’ve got that darker blue number,

the super delegates. We’ll talk about those and who they are and what their magical powers are

in a little while. But you’ll notice the discrepancy there, right, in pledged delegates. Hillary Clinton

has five hundred and forty one pledged delegates. People have said who have positions at the convention who say

we’re going to vote for Hillary. Bernie’s only got forty three. And this is something that’s led to

a lot of hand-wringing on the part of the Sanders supporters. You know, the system is rigged. We’ve got all sorts

of problems with this. You know, it’s not fair, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, that’s the

Democratic side of things. She’s very, very close. He’s not so close, despite the fact

that they’ve kind of gone back and forth in winning states. We’ll talk a little bit about that. Let’s just go

to slide two real quick, just for comparative purposes. We’re talk a lot about the Republicans later on this semester.

We’re not interested in them so much right now on the Republican side. You notice again up at the top,

twelve hundred thirty seven delegates needed to nominate. The Republicans just have fewer total delegates.

The delegates, by the way, come from the states. So states determine processes that fix

how and when and who gets selected as delegates. On the Republican side, the magic number is 12. Thirty

seven. A couple things to note between the Republicans. The Democrats, the Republican front runner, Donald

Trump already has, according to Associated Press reports. Twelve hundred thirty nine delegates.

So he’s too over the top, according to those counts. And he’s still got New Jersey, California,

couple other places to pick up some additional breathing room, I guess. So this is why we say Donald Trump

is the presumptive Republican nominee. You notice down there, lurking in the far right is John Casey

with a hundred sixty one. We put him there just because he was one, the last three standing. Professor McDaniel pointed

out to me a little earlier, Marco Rubio actually has more than a hundred and sixty one. But, you know, we

took out Marco here. Somebody had to go Cruz with about 560.

So they’ll take those delegates to the convention. But the Republican race, for all intents and purposes, is over.

So we go back to slide one, though, our focus on the Democratic side, that race is still active.

And in a lot of the focus has been Sanders doesn’t seem to have a mathematical

shot at winning, but he continues to run. All right. Now, I wanted to to spend.

So that’s the math. That’s kind of where we are right now. But I want to spend a little bit of time talking about

this process in historical terms. It’s not something that’s existed since the founding of

the republic. All right. A couple of points. The first is these are political parties determining

their nominees. This is these are private groups in some sense.

You know, the government doesn’t control political parties. There’s some regulation, but these are private associations

and they can choose their nominees however they want. Now, historically, what’s

happened, the parties and we’ll talk a lot about this later in the semester, sort of develop in the 1820s

and eighteenth thirties and forties, national conventions, nominating conventions come to pass

in the 1830s and 1840s. Since that time, up until about, let’s

say, 1968 or so, the states would determine how their delegates were

selected and they would send a group of delegates to the national convention. More often than not, those

delegates would be selected at a state convention. And the state parties control that process

where their primaries and caucuses. You know, in the eighteen hundreds and early 1990s. Yeah. But

they were mostly beauty contests. That is to say, you’d have a vote. And, you know, the state convention

could take into account the preferences of the voters or not. Sometimes the states wouldn’t even determine

who they were supporting before they sent their delegations. They would go unpledged and they would basically kind of wheel

and deal at the national convention. So that was more or less the process until the early

There are lots of problems with that convention. And it led to changing the system. So the current

presidential nominating system is really kind of pioneered by the Democrats after 68.

And the Republicans sort of followed suit that process. It’s still the case that the states have

a large control, have large control over how they get their delegations together and send them to the national

convention. But what the states have basically done is they’ve turned that process over to the voters.

So if you’re asking why does the Iowa caucus matter? Why does the New Hampshire primary, the Texas primary

matter? It’s because since the 1970s, the states have basically said our

delegations are going to be determined by the outcome of primaries and caucuses, elections.

That’s kind of where we are right now. So I want I want to point out to everybody that basically

we’ve only had you could argue about whether seventy two or seventy six is the first

primary caucus dominated process. I’d probably go seventy six if you count

from 1976, we’ve had 10, 10 elections with this new system in place

and this new system we don’t know. It changes every four years. The states change their rules.

You know, different sides have different practices. There’s different elections in different states. They change the timing

of when the elections are. All this stuff matters as political scientists. We’re still

grappling with how it goes down. And do we have any theories for how this happens?

Broad kind of meta understandings? Not really. You know, it’s one of those things I think we kind of lag

behind the curve a little bit and they keep changing the rules on us. So what we think we know kind of dissipates

from year to year. So we’re still playing a little bit of catch up. All right. So I’m sure that’s a little more

history than you wanted. But if you’re kind of baffled by what the heck is going on in 2016,

we are, too. It’s again, kind of a new ish process. And does it make

much sense to have different contests under different rules in different states at different

times and aggregate the results? No, but it’s a sort of historical artifact.

And, you know, it’s it’s something that, again, we’re still grappling with, you know, really on a case

by case basis. All right. So let’s talk a little bit about since this has been a,

you know, a focal point of criticism. Let’s talk a little bit about the super delegates. So, Professor,

Mic, down to you. You love super delegates, right? Super delegates are you know, those are my people.

So they get to the physical strength thing, right? Isn’t that, you know, unless you can bench press 250

pounds, you’re not a super delegate. I don’t know. Debbie Wasserman Strauss can do that, but you never know. She’s from Florida.

She may be wrestling gators growing up, but superdelegates, they get to wear a cape when

they show up to the primary convention. But the superdelegates are really important. The superdelegates

or those who have elected office, usually at the state, local or national level

and have some power with it within the party. So the reason they’re called superdelegates is because they have

some high level of power within the party by being elected or been active

actively involved in the party. Now, what’s important to understand here is that Hillary Clinton has

again greater than 10 to 1 margin regarding superdelegates compared to Bernie

Sanders. Now, Bernie Sanders supporters are saying, well, no, no, this shows it’s rigged. Here’s

the thing we need to remember. Bernie Sanders became a Democrat a year ago. All right. Hillary

Clinton’s been active, the Democratic Party for decades. Plus, Hillary

Clinton also been referred to as the Shug Night of the Democratic Party. So you don’t mess with sugar, but at the same time. That’s one

thing we need to be aware of, is when it comes to actually raising money, things like that.

You know, Hillary Clinton been doing that work. Bernie Sanders has been an independent. And so the idea

that Bernie Sanders, he didn’t mean many people’s eyes, is kind of

barged into the party is like, hey, where’s my support is troubling expressed to those

those who are established. And so I guess he is the anti-establishment candidate because he doesn’t even have

been part of the establishment. So it’s one of these weird things that’s going on. But these superdelegates

are extremely important because the superdelegates, many people argue, kind of undercut

the democratic process of the primaries, because what you’re doing is you’re allowing these

certain individuals to basically do whatever they please. And this has been one of

the things where they were early on the Sanders supporters were going after the

superdelegates say you’re rigging this. You’re going to steal the election away from Bernie. To now,

Burtis, they don’t know we’re going to recruit them, so we may not win in terms of not winning the primaries, but when

the super delegates and so it’s one of these things where if you have them, you love them. If you don’t,

you hate them. So think of it as a. I guess

like a high school girls for type thing, so, you know, think think it those ways

sort of how they treat the superdelegates. So there with Hillary now here we loves them. But eight years ago,

oh, she couldn’t stand these people when they were all supporting Obama. So maybe

the tactics you’re seeing going all the Sanders you saw going on with Clinton eight years ago. So

this is nothing new. The loser always cries foul and says that it’s rigged against me. That’s

right. Process. Process is the last refuge of scoundrels. I think well, we’d like to

plug in now to SNL. Had a nice cold open. I think basically characterizes the state

of the race kind of moving into the New Jersey and California primaries. So if we could roll that video.

I’ve done it, I’ve won the nomination. I mean, no, I have and I keep losing

states. But mathematically, I’ve done it to my myself.

All right. I think I’m going to head home. Don’t you work too late now? Oh, Mrs. Clinton,

I’m actually closing up the bar right now. So everybody’s got to go. That means you too, sir.

No freaking way.

Anywhere I can stay here as long as I want. Senator Sanders,

I’m sorry, but the night is over. No, no, it’s not over.

Till I say it’s over. Oh, hello, Bernie. I didn’t

see it sitting behind me so far behind me, you can never catch him.

You saw me. You even see me in your sleep, baby. Because I’m your worst

nightmare. Oh, please. My worst nightmare is a mandatory spa day. And, you know,

mine is waiting over an hour at LensCrafters.

Bernie, it’s always so just fine to see you. I love your suit,

by the way. Looks old and I love your suit. Looks like you were just elected to the

Galactic Council. Scuse me, bartender, do you mind

if I just have one more drink with my old, very old kind of dangerously

old friend, Bernie Shaw, Mrs. Clinton. What can I get for you, too?

I’ll have a beer. A new brand that people are flocking to. Something

refreshing and revolutionary. Something that draws huge crowds.

And I’ll have whatever beer no one likes but gets the job done.

Bernie, you should be proud. You know, you ran a damn good campaign. I’m

running a good campaign. But don’t worry. I promise I’m gonna have a very special role for you

in my own administration. How would you like to be? Wait for it. The senator

from Vermont. Oh, Hillary. Oh,

missed that block of charm. I’ll miss your deal, too,

but I have to move on. And that’s why I’ve started pivoting to the general.

I got to say, I noticed the pivot. Not a fan

of the pivot. Way too early for the pivot. Why do you keep saying pivot? What is that?

Here are your drinks. And who’s built it up with this high?

Well, burning, no matter what happens, you gotta admit we’ve had some good times, you and I. Yeah, it’s true.

Remember maybe when I told her, you want to stop talking about your damn e-mail. What a schmuck.

So stop. Know. I do not like humor.

But that was funny. Oh, my God. And remember,

all those states like Wyoming, where you beat me by a lot, but then I still got most of the delegates.

That was so stupid, great. Oh, my God.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Debbie?

Listen, Hillary, this might be the big talking, but I tell

you a secret, okay? You know how I constantly rail against the upper

class. Yes. Well, sometimes when I go to sleep at night,

I dream about being a fancy millionaire or a billionaire real. And

in my dream, I wear a fancy hat. I see fancy things like

I’ll have a tuna sandwich on a croissant.

Can I tell you a secret, I’ve never told anyone this, but, you know, the presidency.

Yeah. I really, really want it.

Don’t say that. And you know what else? I don’t really like

people. I only talk to them because I want to be the president so bad. Please don’t

tell, don’t tell. You think they know? You

know, we are mortal enemies. But I really admire you. So what do you say?

Will you dance with me? I can’t dance. I don’t know about

that. I’ll give you three super delegate. Let’s dance.

And I’ll leave. Never.

All right. May I cut in?

Perfect couple of small points. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the

head of the Democratic National Committee and she’s been kind of a Hillary backer from day one. So that’s the

inside joke there. And you saw a couple of references. I heard a couple references to superdelegates. So

the next two contests that are going to be up next Tuesday, next Tuesday are a New Jersey

primary. And then you’ve got the California primary. And Hillary will probably go over the top officially

with the New Jersey primary. And she’ll probably make her speech immediately after that because

it’ll be something like a primetime speech. She doesn’t want to wait till 11:00 Eastern time when

California gets done. Plus, she could lose California. Professor McDaniel,

we’re talking a little bit about the demography of the vote. Just so you guys are kind of aware of these things. Basically,

Bernie’s been killing it with young people because, you know, 18 to

Be that as it may, Hillary is doing really well with with African-Americans, to slightly

lesser extent Hispanics as there seniors. There’s not much of a gender gap, really,

which you might assume there is, and there probably will be in the general, but there’s not much of one in the primary women

don’t disproportionately support. It’s got a little bit of an edge there, but not all that much. I mean, Bernie

Sanders is Drake. Hillary Clinton is al Green. So like that. Yes.

GREENE is love. Yeah, that’s right. Again, we’ve become a middle aged black man. Some

heard reason how greed sounds so much better. But this is really a thing that’s been sticking

out. As you know, Hillary Clinton, even though people say she is not personable, has really done really

been active in reaching out to the afterwork community, keeping them mobilized. Was Bernie Sanders

really kind of jumped on, kind of came came a little bit late? I mean, again, he’s from Vermont.

And I think at one point, Vermont was really the whitest state in America. So the idea of actively

dealing with African-American issues, I think deals more with Canadian issues than African-American issues in Vermont.

I think that’s right. I think, you know, the consensus is that there’s an appreciable minority population

in a state. Hillary does better and better the larger that percentages. We wanted to transition

to our second topic today, which is Hillary’s e-mails and her server. And, you know, you heard

it referenced in the SNL skit. Professor McDaniel, I would offer to all

that if there are two things that have really hurt Hillary Clinton as she matches up potentially with

Donald Trump in a general election. The first is her inability to subdue Bernie Sanders and actually win

the nomination. The second is this persistent email and server issue that cropped

up when she was secretary of state. We have a video that kind of describes the most recent turn of events here and gives you

a little background. Let’s see if we can roll that right now. The Clinton campaign is in full damage

control mode tonight. The candidate herself is finally coming out to respond. And frankly,

spin the State Department inspector general’s report into something more of a slap on the wrist instead

of a knockout punch with, of course, an FBI investigation still pending.

Senior political correspondent Mike Emanuel is with the Clinton team in San Jose, California, tonight.

It took Hillary Clinton more than 24 hours to respond to the State Department’s internal watchdog report

that was critical of her use of a private email server. It was allowed and the rules have been

clarified since I left about the practice. Having said that, I

have said many times it was a mistake and if I could go back, I would do

it differently. Reporters had tried asking her about the report, but she ignored the question.

Clinton initially left those questions for her campaign press secretary to handle. Hillary Clinton has

answered a lot of questions about it, but there’s really no new information that came to light in this report.

Use of personal email by officials at the State Department was allowed. Instead, Clinton is

trying to fire up union supporters, saying this is a make or break election. Go to everyone

who has faced hostile management. Has the legislature, a union

busting governor or all three? Help is on

the way. The latest poll from Public Policy Institute

of California reveals Clinton’s lead in the Golden State has evaporated. She was up 7 percentage

points over Sanders in March, and now it’s Clinton 46, Sanders 44. Within the

poll’s margin of error, Sanders appears to be feeling it. On June 7,

let this great state tell the world you are prepared to go forward with a political

revolution. Sanders has also come out strongly in favor of California’s adult use of marijuana

initiative. I personally believe that legalizing

marijuana is the right thing to do. And now the Clinton

campaign is being forced to advertise in California. It’s expected to be a six figure ad buy

starting tomorrow in response to Sanders spending $1.5 million dollars to drive

home his message. You have the power to choose a new direction for the Democratic Party.

The Clinton team is downplaying the need for her to win California, noting she should have enough delegates after New Jersey’s

primary. But they clearly don’t want Sanders saying he’s the one with momentum heading into

the July convention. Read like a manual live in a Clinton event in San Jose.

Mike, thank you. Now, before we go into the issues with Hillary Clinton, her server,

I do have a question about Bernie Sanders and his support of legalizing pot.

I think we really need to look in to see what degree did he received donations from Frito Lay, because really,

I think, you know, who is going to bedifferent benefit from the munchies. The most Frito Lay

hostess need to look at that, Bernie. Man of the people, I think Bernie might be might be

a corporate stooge. I think we have the source of Bernie Sanders appeal with young people.

You know, it goes back to 2008 to, you know, phraseology, you know, smoke, dope, vote.

Hope so. But he’s got his issue on the email server.

Let’s break this down real quickly. There are two elements to it. When Hillary Clinton became secretary of state

in 2009, you know, she decided to do two things. She decided to

use her own personal email account to handle incoming emails rather than the government

account. And then she also decided to move all of her personal email correspondences

onto a private server which was housed at a compound in Colorado. And there’s been a lot of controversy

over this when the story first broke. Was this appropriate? Was a security risk in the Clinton people have basically sort of pushed

back saying, you know, other secretaries of state have done it. They’ve noted that Colin Powell

had a private email, didn’t have a server, but had a private e-mail account. They said that John Kerry

did it. Well, the inspector general’s report, inspector generals from the State Department. So it’s

an internal investigation. And the inspector general really kind of came out with a fairly scathing report

and said that, in fact, it is true that Colin Powell used a personal e-mail account, but that was before,

you know, the State Department had sort of the capacity to deal with all of the emails that they now do. So

it wasn’t that unusual. Secretary Kerry’s barely used a personal account and only for personal emails.

So they’ve pushed back a little bit on some of the things that have been prominent in the Clinton defense.

Why do we care about this? What’s interesting? Well, people will argue that it speaks

to a sort of secrecy and a lack of transparency, a desire to kind of keep her stuff

off the grid. And when you’re secretary of state, that can be arguably a dangerous

thing. You know that if you’ve got a personal email account and a server, it could get hacked. It’s

not subject to the sorts of security guidelines and standards that the government’s stuff isn’t so. And then there’s been her response.

So that’s kind of the source of this controversy. The FBI is conducting an investigation

and will issue recommendations on this. It’s possible the FBI could recommend indicting

former Secretary Clinton. Unlikely, but it’s possible, I guess maybe more for our purposes.

Can we go to the slide that shows when this story broke, which was really, you know, spring of

last year, Hillary Clinton was kind of a break even candidate. She wasn’t particularly

liked or disliked. And that’s pretty good for someone who’s been in the public eye as long as she has. So she got her favorability

numbers. Generally speaking, do you feel favorably towards Hillary Clinton or unfavorably? And she was minus

four. But, you know, right around break, even one year later, all the drip, drip,

drip from this email and server controversy. She’s now 24 points underwater,

as we say. Sixty one percent unfavorable. And that’s something that’s just been a drag

on her. And maybe even more specifically, her honesty and trustworthiness numbers

are really in the tank. And that’s just very difficult to overcome as a general

election candidate running for president. You want people to trust, you have confidence in you. So those are the same

problems she was playing with in 0 8. I mean, in 0 8, the trustworthiness was there. I mean, if you think about

this, since she was a Cubs fan, until all of a sudden Bill Clinton’s out of the White House moves in New York. I’m

a Yankees fan. Come on now. Yeah. That was reprehensible. Yeah. I mean, no, no, we don’t we don’t

do those things. So she’s she’s gotten in trouble for

that. Why can’t we really trust what people said? Like as a person, she’s actually a great person, just a horrible candidate.

And this is this is problematic for her. They said one to one, she’s great either.

Tons of stories they’ve told about one on one, especially with dealing with black women.

That’s where the men come out, coming out of the mothers of of gun violence. But

as a candidate, she just does not seem to care that I care about off very well. And this has become

problematic. Try to use the I’m a I’m a grandmother thing. And then the

you know, the suits are actually kind of interesting. Some of the first time she brought she wore the big

yellow one, which was debating Bernie Sanders. And I was like, wow, you’re going to fight socialism

by being dressed as a yellow version of Chairman Mao is really not going to work. But she

is fighting this image problem. And to some degree, it’s

her fault to some degree. My mother. Other things. But it’s something that’s plagued her for really the past

six, two decades now. You know, I think I’ll just make sort of editorial comment. And in fact, is just

because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong. And there’s an element of that with respect to Hillary. Server and

the emails. I mean, I my sort of guess is that she moved a lot of this stuff off line

because she thought that people were Republicans and the media were going to Foya.

As we say, Freedom of Information Act, that’s Foya. People are gonna file these Freedom of Information

Act on everything she did as secretary of state, and she was not going to be able to control her correspondences.

And she was just gonna it was gonna be a never ending source of problems. I think that’s probably why she made this decision in

the first place. But that comes with the risk. Yeah, right. And you know, so like I said,

I do think that Hillary probably because of her experience in the White House and her

experience as a senator from New York is says a certain amount of paranoia with respect to the Republicans and

the media. I think some sense that’s understandable. But does that justify

essentially flouting State Department directives on this? And, you know, she made it.

She basically made a calculated gamble. And I think this is sort of the fallout from that gamble. Still not clear to me. It was a

bad gamble. I mean, it’s not totally clear. It’s hurt her irreparably, but

it’s in the news. Yeah. I mean, I guess she was of the belief. It’s easy to say I’m sorry than to

ask permission. I think that’s because she didn’t ask for permission. It was made abundantly clear.

All right. Well, we’ll hit our last topic here. Not gonna spend a lot of time on it because of ongoing, right?

Yeah, right. And that’s President Obama in the last year of his two terms in office.

It’s doing a little bit of legacy building. He’s trying to get stuff done in the face of a Republican Congress

that doesn’t want to help him do anything. And the primary mechanism that the president has used to try

to achieve things is by issuing executive orders, which aren’t laws.

They’re kind of commands within the executive branch by doing a lot of kind of

extra congressional sorts of activities. You know, we can talk about things like opening

up Cuba, a deal executive agreement with the Iranians on the nuclear program,

things like wage raising, the minimum wage for federal employees. And most recently

and I guess what sparked Professor MacDANIELS interest in this topic today is there was a regulation

passed or a change in the regulations regarding overtime pay for federal employees

and people related to the federal branch. And so, you know, we want to just say a few things more generally, I guess, about,

you know, this sort of conflict and President Obama’s kind of moving around Congress. I think he’s just gotten

so frustrated dealing with the Republican Congress that he’s decided

it’s easier to issue executive orders and to, I guess, in the case of, for instance,

another prominent example be immigration law, basically to claim that, well, you know,

there’s a lot of interpretive freedom when it comes to, you know, enacting

a congressional law. Right. So, I mean, we see this in health care, right? Yeah. I mean, a lot of this he’s saying,

you know, you don’t wanna help. I’m going to do something. And what the courts decide and that’s the courts are dealing with the

not with the immigrations settle things zone with the ACA before the Affordable

Care Act. And so the president’s by saying, you know what, I want to make these changes. You don’t want to work with me.

I’ll do something. And it’s it’s an interesting game because

Senator Obama complained about the overuse of power of President Bush. Now that

he’s President Obama, this he is realizing I don’t use as much power as possible.

So it’s one of these things like where you stand depends on where you sit. But it’s also bodes is

very important for who comes next in the White House. So how much power do you want to put in the hands

of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump when they get into the White House? And so you may want to curb the power of

Congress. I mean, of the president. And let’s also be clear that it’s not just the issue of

a Democratic president, the Republican Congress. If we had a Democratic Congress and a Democratic

president, Congress still be pushing back on the powers of the president because Congress itself does not want its

legitimacy decreased because of the president’s action. So part of this is a partisan

fight, but also fight between institutions over over who is most powerful and dictating

the policies and actions of the government. I mean, this is a classic point. And we’re going to be talking a

lot about, you know, the Constitution and the prescribed powers to go to the legislature,

the Congress, to the executive, the president. And over time and we’ll hit on this a lot in

the lecture modules. Over time, it’s really been the case that the president has kind of gradually increased his power

relative relative to the Congress. But it’s the Congress in Article 1 that sort of has most of the power.

And so Republicans, as the majority party in Congress, are kind of whining a lot about this now about President

Obama going well beyond what he is prescribed powers as per Article 2

of the Constitution. But Professor Dan’s point is exactly right.

It’s not a partisan thing. You know, when you occupy the White House with your Republican or Democrat,

you tend to get a fairly expansive view of executive powers. And when you don’t occupy the White

House, suddenly you’re a strict constructionist and think that, well, we need to go back to limited powers

and. Congressional sort of supremacy that you see prescribed in the Constitution. So but it has been interesting

and as President Obama has tried to burnish his legacy to try to get stuff done. He’s been very

expansive. His interpretation of what exactly the rights the executive has to interpret

laws. You know, the Republicans will say President Obama’s making laws up without congressional

authorization. What the defenders of the president would say is that, no, he’s simply interpreting laws and he

has that authority as president, the United States. So, again, the examples are on immigration, you know,

on the Health Care Act, on some of these issues involving minimum minimum wage

and overtime laws on environmental standards and the EPA, the

Environmental Protection Agency. So the president hasn’t gone to Congress and sort of

initiated legislation much lately. You know, he’s mostly just a kind of state within the executive

branch and operated there. Right. And that’s probably what we’ll get for the next year. All right. So, yeah,

so we got until, I guess, early January. So expect fun,

fun, fun. So that is all we have for this week. And

we’ll get next week will cover on some more issues, probably talking before the Supreme Court and some of the things going

on in Texas, because, again, these executive orders do affect the state of Texas. And you are seeing Texas fighting back actively

in the courts against the federal government, which is kind of the way things go in Texas. If you ain’t suing the federal government,

what are you doing in Texas? But we’ll see you all next week. Have a good week. Take care.

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

and is 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.