Ep. 2 – The 2018 Midterm Elections: A Conversation with Dr. Richard Reddick

[0:00:07 Peniel] welcome to race and democracy. A podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship.

[0:00:22 Peniel] Okay, we’re pleased to welcome my colleague, Dr Richard Reddick. Rich, we’re gonna talk about the election, but you do so many different things on campus. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[0:00:33 Richard] I’m the Swiss Army knife of the campus. Uh, first of all, Peniel. Thank you for inviting me. And I just wanna get a shadow. I listen to the first episode we did with Dr More, and it was terrific. It was great driving. You know, if you live in Austin, you gotta drive. So podcasts are a great way toe sort of Inform yourself. So that was a great conversation. Some excited to be here. Um, So primarily, my appointment is in the School of Education. I am associate professor and director of the program and higher education Leadership. I also have appointment and African Afghan Jasper studies in the War Field Center for Afghan African American Studies. I also service the assistant director of the planned to artist program and those of the jobs I get paid for. So, you know, look, I said Swiss Army knife. I think you know my experience, of course, is that I’m a Texas X I with the school, here’s undergrad, and so I’m just by nature just attached to a lot of parts of campus. It’s funny. It’s like a curse. You come back to, your are modern and you’ll end up being involved in a bunch of things that oh, I care about that I was involved in that or I think that’s an important thing. And of course, being from Austin, I have a lot of responsibilities that tie into the community at work on I’m the board president of a charter school called Magnolia Montessori for all which is, which was the first public Montessori school in the Sea of Austin.

[0:01:50 Richard] And I also serve on the advisory board for the idea. Public schools was a charter network out of South Texas. So, yeah, and also I served on the mayor’s task force for institutional racism. Structural inequity. Yes, I’m on that. I’m not. Yes, we waited together. You know you have another role. You’re in the policy area. I’m in the education area, but also a dad to Karl and Katherine, which is probably the most pressing of all those things. I do,
[0:02:16 Peniel] but no, absolutely. Yeah. I’m a proud father as well. Let’s let’s begin. Um, last night was the 2018 midterms. An election that was really perceived in many quarters is the most important of the last half century in the context of this age of Trump. Sure. First thing I’m gonna ask you, What are your feelings about the election? And what does this mean for Democrats in 2020 and we can start at home with Beto. O’Rourke, pet over really became a rock star during this 2017 2018 midterm cycle. A lot of people have talked about Beto for president. Um, he ends up losing to Cruz. Gets about 48% of the vote. Pretty tight for a Texas rates. It’s a surprisingly robust race. What do you think?

[0:03:01 Richard] Yeah, I’m and I think many of us were looking at the returns early on and saw him leading for quite a bar part of the night. And so you started having this sense like, is it gonna happen? And I relate to my, uh, coming of age politically, The first election I voted in. I was 18 years old, was 1990 for Ann Richards, and I was reflecting on that election. Obviously, amateurs one. But that campaign is a campaign worth studying because, you know, talk about being an underdog and talk about having a candidate Clinton Williams, who made so many critical errors that made it possible for to eke out a victory and, um, fair play to Ted Cruz. He was a very disciplined candidate. He knew the pathway for victory for him was to sort of attach himself to the president and to sort of stay on message about Texas and jobs and so on and so forth.

[0:03:55 Richard] And, um, despite I think, a charismatic and amazingly engaging campaign for young people, especially for Beto. He came short, but I think look at Tarrant County. He went Tarrant County. That hasn’t happened in decades. So I was telling this to my students just in my class before, you know, I didn’t assume that they had voted for any particular candidate. But I said, one important thing to take away from these midterm elections is that sometimes a loss is a victory, and that is the fact that Beto was in 15,000 votes of unseating incumbent. A state that has voted rip Oakland for the last 20 odd years is significant, and the way he did it is significant, sort of, the rejection of the centrist. I’m almost like a Republican, but I’m really not. He was unabashedly a progressive, ran that way and brought out people we hadn’t seen vote before. So I think a lot of reasons to be. If you’re a Democrat, to be optimistic, I think that means that there is something happening. I think you know, I’ll leave this to the Jim Henson’s of the world. But I do think this is the purpose of Texas. It’s happening absolutely. There’s something that’s happening now that we wouldn’t have predicted. And even some of the races, like for attorney general. Those were close as well. So the down ballot effect we’re sending to ah, Latin X women to Congress for the first time in Texas history, there has to be some kind of connection between the excitement that Beto brought out for progressives and Democrats and also independence. Ah, that had a ripple effect on those other races as well.

[0:05:33 Peniel] Yeah, I think I agree with you and I want to talk about this optimism because I think last night Democrats had three national rising stars in Stacey Abrams, whose first black woman nominated major party candidate for governor of Georgia, Andrew Gillum, who was poised to be Florida’s first black um, governor, and Beto O’Rourke. And they all ran unabashedly progressive campaigns. Stacey Abrams that is still in doubts, right? She’s not conceded, and and there may be a runoff in December there, but Andrew Gillum lost by about 90,000 votes. It looks like it’s point. It’s 0.0.7 point six, and he just missed the cut off for the recount. They’re still counting, and they’re still counting. So that may. But I want us to talk about, you know, was very interesting about those three national candidates. Is their efforts to really move the Democratic Party? And I would say not just to the left, but really back to its origins in the New Deal and the Great Society. It’s right, right, But this time we think about the New Deal and great society. Those efforts one. The New Deal wasn’t inclusive because of how the new deal was basically, Jim crowed in terms of public policy and housing and other aspects in a new deal. The great Society tried and there’s a big effort. We’re here. I’m at the LBJ School, right? But the Great Society also was contradicted by money and financial expenditures spent in the war in Vietnam. Yeah, right. So we think about Beto O Rourke. Andrew Gillum, Um, Stacey Abrams. What I thought of was really both Martin Luther King Jr and and Jesse Jackson’s presidential runs. So even though they all, um and we don’t know, Stacey Abrams has lost. But Beto lost, and Andrew Gillum conceded, I thought about Gillam. Got four million votes, Um, really running as this black progressive in a deep Southern red state. Right? And last night, Florida also voted to restore the franchise toe. 1.4 million former felons. 40% of them are black men, black men. So I mean, this is extremely exciting, especially rich. I want you to talk about the excitement of the Abrams and the Gillem in the Better Rock campaign and compare and contrast that with in the aftermath of 2016 Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, the Socialist we’re making a claim that the party needed to reach out to angry white voters. And that was the team. And even though these three candidates they have unnecessarily come out on top, they ran extraordinary, robust campaigns that should really provide a framework in a blueprint for 2020.

[0:08:19 Richard] Yeah, yeah, I think it’s a fascinating analysis night. I agree with you. I spent some time in Georgia this this past year, and during the campaign, a good friend of mine was campaigning for Stacey Abrams and Grant. I was in Atlanta, but, you know, you don’t use that kind of energy around a campaign. I walked off the plane literally, people wearing shirts. I saw signs. Same thing with better when people say, people call me like what’s going on in Texas with Beto? But first we talk about how you’re doing. How’s your life rich like? Has Beto doing right like I know him? Um, so, yeah, I think you’re right. I think there’s something a repudiation of this mythology about, and I think what what Trump has shown us for the last two years is that there’s a base there that’s not going away. You’re not gonna peel him away. And I think about this concept. I’ve been toying with the empathy gap, and I think when you think about sort of the the sort of cumulative effect of having residential segregation ah, school segregation. What Robert Putnam talks about as far as people being socially disconnected.

[0:09:23 Peniel] And Robert Putnam, the Harvard sociologist, right? Yeah, bowling alone, bowling

[0:09:27 Richard] alone. That’s right, a pivotal book. And so all the things together means that there are there are folks who are just sort of setting where they’re going to be. And I do think was a fool’s errand to kind of say, Let’s bring them back because I think you can bring some people back. But that can’t be the plank in the main focus of a campaign. I think it’s about reaching out to people who have felt left behind and literally not. People were just in the grievance eso the industrial complex, the folks who just, you know, I’m angry, sort of the anti viewer who’s just fuming about things when in fact that person is actually benefiting significantly from societal and racial privilege. But more this conversation that there are people truly were concerned about things like student debt. There are people who are truly concerned about things like the Pres industrial complex, right? How about rejects those folks and getting them excited? Because one thing that Leonard said last week, which I thought was powerful, was the idea people typically, you converted eight people more, much more adroitly by inspiring rather than make them angry for some demographics that works. And I will say, you know, for the white, angry male voter that has been effective. But I think for folks of color and for women, it’s a different conversation. Um, folks want to be inspired. That’s why Obama was so successful because his message was hopeful. Um, and

[0:10:47 Peniel] His message was hopeful. But one of the things I think that Abrams and Beto O. Rourke and Andrew Gillum show without saying it, it’s really implicit is that there was a disconnect even with the Affordable Care Act. Even with the American Recovery Act, there was a disconnect between Obama’s 2008 rhetoric of hope and change and what ultimately, yeah, the concrete results, the Policy implications event. He gets two years of policy in 9 4010 the final two years in 2015 and 16 there’s more executive orders. But in between that from 2011 to 2014 is just the politics of of congressional obstruction sure that he’s really unable to get any headway out of. And meanwhile, Democrats suffer unbelievable catastrophic losses in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections. 2010 Democrats lose the House of Representatives in 2014. The Democrats lose the Senate. All told Obama during his administration, Democrats lost 13 Senate seats, right, and they lost dozens of seats in the House of Representatives. So one of the things that these candidates have done is really connect their optimistic rhetoric to concrete policy agendas, including Medicare. For all its very college tuition, the end of mass incarceration as we know it all these transformative, the end of voter suppression, women having parental leave, women and men having parentally childcare, really transforming the welfare system in a positive way. That’s not punitive. So rolling back to Clinton Crime bill, your welfare reform act. So I think they’ve really touched in a very nuanced way on connecting and bridging that gap.

[0:12:38 Richard] Well, I think is interesting about panels that you know when you one of the advantages I think I bring to sort of political analysis is I didn’t grow up in the United States. I spent 10 years living the UK Ah, and so understanding, sort of that multiple parties system. And not that I had a nuanced view as a kid, but really understanding that what brought the Democrats into political power in the executive branch was a centrism in the nineties, exemplified by Clinton, right centrist policies, Republican lite policies that worked for the moment. But the reality is, you said, is the Democratic Party is not composed of people like that primarily, and people want to see policy that impacts and changes their lives. So there was a strategy shift that had to take place, like Okay, so now you’re in a power, and I think something is also powerful. Is this idea that, uh and I think again, once again, referring to the previous podcast with Dr.Moore, I really think it’s important to talk about the fact that, well,

[0:13:37 Richard] who who got prepared and trained and molded to take leadership at some point in time. And, um, you know, he’s always like who’s gonna run in 2020 and I’ve been telling people you don’t know that person isn’t even seen yet because I think we’re seeing a change in the way that politics is being offered up, especially in the more progressive area. When I say progressive, I mean people who truly are left of center versus centrists, and I think it’s a valuable lesson to be learned is like there is actually a crying in the box popular Right now, people want to see candidates that are talking about progressive policies, and your point of the new deal is really well taken because, you know, I’m talking to my cup, my students, my freshmen students. I’m teaching my U. G s 30 to class and you know, we talk about college costs, and their whole obsession is about how much is this life changing experience costing me? Let’s only think about, and I’m from a generation where we didn’t have that concern and we’re in the same classroom is not like we’re I’m like 10 generations older than them is like, literally this happened in the last 30 years, and, um, they have to be sort of motivated to sort of say I want government toe work for me. I actually want to benefit. It’s not this idea of having things. You know? Romney’s you know, makers and takers comment. But no. As a citizen of this country, there are certain rights that I believe I should have. Um, and one of those rights is education and all the things that it offers,

[0:15:12 Richard] and it’s a very easy argument to make it. It’s actually kind of productive to argue against things like low cost or free tuition. It makes no sense to say those things that make any sense because ultimately college graduates in the being taxpayers and entrepreneurs always different things to contribute to the society. You know, we got, ah, debt crisis that is now outpaced consumer debt. Um, we’ve got people who are literally making choices about started family. Do I buy a house? Why, by consumer durables? I can’t because I can’t afford to.

[0:15:43 Peniel] And this has to be at the center of the Democratic Parties rhetoric. One thing I want to talk about with you is some preliminary preliminary lessons that we can take. I wrote an article on CNN in terms of about what happened last night, and one of the things I discussed was voting rights and how voting rights matter and how voting rights really have to be part of the rhetoric in the campaign of any Democrat at the local, state or national level. Because there’s so much voter suppression that is being organized against the majority of Americans, but specifically young people, people of color, people, at times, rural people of color. It’s people who are not in the mainstream and not elites and privileged. What can we think about when think about voter suppression, especially the fact that both rictus Santis, who seems like he’s gonna be the next governor who’s gonna be the next governor of Florida? Kemp, who was the secretary of state in in Georgia, did so much voting shenanigans and also right here in Texas. We suffer from voter suppression, especially in the aftermath of the 2013 Supreme Court Shelby V. Holder, a repeal of the Voting Rights Act enforcement cloth. So what can we say about voting? And what should the Democratic Party be advocating in terms of voting, voting rights and also ending voting suppression?

[0:17:06 Richard] Yeah, I think that’s a such a key point to talk about because through the repeal, the Voting Rights Act through gerrymandering, all the different things that have been done and people knew coming into the game like Democrats have to over perform. So I think Number. I heard it’s seven million more votes for Democrats across the nation,

[0:17:23 Peniel] plus 7.5. Yeah, so

[0:17:26 Richard] you know, it’s it’s amazing to think that represented democracy can be sort of toyed with that way. And I think, for instance, I was talk to my students about the fact that voter I D laws are not something that I grew up with. Like I voted 1990 I walked up to the poll. I didn’t have to, so anything I just went up there and given this country’s very ugly and very recent history of voter suppression, it didn’t go away. The voting right acts basically secured the issue of pre clearance, so we could definitely check and make sure that things were changing. There was some oversight to that whole process, and as soon as that went away in Serbia vs Holder. As you said, the san get started again. And you know, I’m in this point about Brian Kemp. I said he’s gonna go down the history and not in a good way, because these were efforts that were so transparent. And so, um, obviously the idea that people who had missing periods of their name would be taken off the voting rules The idea that the secretary of state who is managing the election is somehow not recused from actually being in the election, right? If you’re running for that office, how are you able to count? Like I think, in the very most essential analogies, you know, you don’t count the money. You know, if you’re the person supposed to be the person is

[0:18:38 Peniel] an obvious conflict of them,

[0:18:39 Richard] right and and that’s problematic. So I think again, I think about the fact that we’ve had a number of Democratic governors brought into office which will oversee things like redistricting. So I think that’s really important point and all the sort conscious we have about how the game is rigged. So basically, I think since late sixties and this is your area. But I certainly think the realization that demographics, destiny, we’re going to see changes happen in this country,

[0:19:04 Peniel] especially after the Voting Rights Act, right, so How do we,

[0:19:07 Richard] uh, sort of preserved in amber, you know, white supremacy. We do it by monkeying around, using that term. Ah, with the rules of the game

[0:19:15 Peniel] And that’s been the Republican Party’s playbook. The GOP straight playbook in terms of Southern Majority and right now in terms of democracy is destiny there blocking the destiny of black and brown folks for anything about this Latin next population that came out in full force, 12% a record in midterms and percentage wise. Black people were 12%.

[0:19:33 Peniel] I want it. I want a shift from voting rights to the over racism that we’re seeing is a voter suppression. Is the new Jim Crow sure and poll tax of our political time. In the age of Trump, what’s been astonishing to see or maybe not quite astonishing is the overt racism coming from Kemp coming from the Santis crews coming coming from the president of the United States. So this isn’t coded anymore, and Hanley will. This isn’t dog whistle politics more so let’s talk about the new racism. We thought that that was dead because of the end of formal Jim Crow and and Governor George Wallace in Alabama. Sure, and white supremacists like Jim Eastland in Mississippi, who are overt racist, were being called Everything but the N Word. And when you think about the Trump ad with immigrants and caravans and marauders,

[0:20:27 Richard] yeah, it’s the Willie Horton ad on steroids, and it’s

[0:20:31 Peniel] and Willie Horton was the 1988 ad that the George W. Bush George H. W. Bush campaign unleashed its right. That compared Willie Horton, Ah, convicted criminal who had been furloughed by Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis and basically almost superimposed their images side by side and ruined Dukakis’s chances of being president in 88.

[0:20:51 Richard] Yeah, I, I think. And I will also say that, um, for me, it’s interesting to think about this idea and, of course, being in higher education. Scholar, I think about sort of the advent of political correctness. And so, you know, late eighties early 19 nineties, when we started saying, Let’s recast how we think about language and how we sort of think about identities on college campuses. And instead of making that ah, conversation about the changing demographics of the country, people took offense and of course, because it challenges white supremacy, it challenges the very idea is that you inherently entitled to these privileges because you have white skin tone or because you’re male, your CIS gender, whatever. And what’s interesting to me is that there has been this sort of retrenchment where people have, you know, Americans. I think, as a people are very simple to fear. You know, I think about what got an investment education. 19 fifties is fear of the Soviets, right? We we’d we we have aspirational and lofty goals. But when things come down to the nitty gritty comes down to fear. Can I scare you into getting something done? And I think this perpetual fear of the other, this idea that ah, black and brown people will treat the new minority of white people the way that they were treated is an interesting concept. That’s why you fight so hard for you. Like if you treat me the way we’ve treated you, I’m looking for that at all. And so I think you’re right. Having this president particular, who unabashedly embraced racism and nationalism. I’ve been fascinated. People were said, Oh, this is the final straw like, did he say the n word or not? It doesn’t matter I said when he His leading card is birtherism and his leading card is Mexicans are rapists. Um, I think you’ve heard all you need to hear. So if he said the word or not is really irrelevant. We know the president operates on a racist agenda and is to use Andrew Gollum’s You know, famous phrase from this election season. The races think you’re racist. Yeah, that’s what really matters. And so I think there’s been this un bridling in this freeing of the tongues of of white Racists and also normalization of racism. So we’ve operated. You and I have operated were the same age court in the time where people sort of have to couch these things. Now you just kind of put it out there, and you can use pseudo signs and literally ah skewed fax to sort of claim these things. I see these sort of pre masticated arguments that people sort of pick up on and and Fox or in Breitbart’s or in campus reform dot orig, And they’ve got an argument that sort of will this this turn the other? I have this whole argument sort of set up, and it goes back to this idea that instead of embracing Reince Priebus when he was RNC chair the post mortem like Let’s look what happened, let’s make better outreach. It’s so interesting to think about that moment where he was on national TV, saying, You know what? This loss we had shows us that we have not done the work we need to do the 2012 after 2012 after Romney, you know, we need to go back to the drawing board, and Trump’s like, Wait a minute, let’s go back to what works and let’s just double down on it and it’s been effective. And I think the, um, like I said, You have to think of the combination of the things we talked about, the voter suppression, the racial gerrymandering, the harkening and calling on white supremacy to sort of defend our nation. This is George Wallace reanimated right?

[0:24:14 Peniel] And what do you think very quickly, cause I’m gonna were gonna end by talking on an optimistic note. The deep divisions that we’re seeing. New York Times said last night that or this morning that the nation’s more polarized than ever, because right now we’ve lost our moral compass. We we don’t have a national consensus, and I mean a national consensus. I’m not even talking about on health care. I mean, on citizenship, on justice, on equality for women, that means on the 14th Amendment, right? So what do you think just briefly in terms of are these racial divisions deepening? Can we get out of these racial divisions with a progressive new deal style agenda? Or is it that we’re gonna win by bringing more of our people to the polls? And if we stay in power long enough, we build consensus.

[0:25:02 Richard] So I think about interest Convergence. You know, Derrick Bell talked about, you know, bringing interest together from similar diversion perspectives. Right? And I think about the fact that student debt to me, is a galvanizing issue for his generation. I think of your conservative of your liberal student. If you’re you know, a political, that’s something you care about. And as I often talk to my students and this is the area you work in the 19 sixties, the draft was a galvanizing effect because if you are male or you cared about male people in your life that impacted everybody and so people had to fix stands and people who had very different political views came together and said, This is a problem for us. I think the other pieces back to this issue. And again I were the mercy of Texas. Ah, where Walter Cronkite went to school. Ah, and I think about the times that that voice of trust So Walter Cronkite reporting to you the death of John F. Kennedy or the number of troops that have been lost in Vietnam. There was a voice in this country that, like my gosh, he said that then it must be legit. I think we’re seeing, oddly enough, this is my hypothesis. We’re seeing that moral leadership not in government, not in media, not in communities of faith. Even. Perhaps it’s coming from the corporate sector because you’ve got Starbucks, you know, making political stands. You’ve got Google saying certain things, and oddly enough, these organizations are working from a perspective and saying, Look, it’s this bad for the bottom line. Our customers, the people who work for us. This is harming them so we’ll make a stand. And, you know, maybe I’m less concerned about the purity of the motives but I’m more concerned about theirs. Ah, entity with capital, with economic capital with social capital saying this is a problem for us. And so I think we’re an interesting place where we’re seeing very unusual organizational embraces of of morals and ethics and they’re not perfect, right? I mean, Google just had to walk out with their women’s staff members because they’re not doing all they could do in that area. But I do think interested in notice after the pulse nightclub shooting. Ah, you know, black lives matter to see some of a sudden organizations companies popping up in saying This is a problem for us. You know, I’ve written about the Starbucks approach to what happened in Philadelphia, and my thought is, you know,

[0:27:24 Peniel] And this is when the black young men were told to leave when they, they were waiting for a friend and they were told to leave. And that’s sparked a national controversy

[0:27:32 Richard] Yeah, and you know, there’s the whole song and dance about Well, let’s just do what it takes to cover this up versus Let’s actually have perhaps symbolic, perhaps ineffectual. But nevertheless, let’s do something beyond the apology,

[0:27:46 Peniel] and Starbucks eventually closed their stores to do a training, and it was Howard Schultz and CEO

[0:27:52 Richard] May 29th. They set their stores down and actually did trainings. They consulted with Sherlund iPhone always other folks who are prominent civil rights activist to sort of talk about. How do we afford on this?

[0:28:03 Peniel] I want to close with the discussion, um, on an optimistic note about last night proving that the Obama coalition or whatever coalition you want to talk multiracial, multicultural, progressive coalition multigenerational is really alive and well, you know, we saw Ayanna Pressley win. We saw Rachel Rollins win, Boston District Attorney out of Suffolk County. We saw Alexandria Ocasio, Cortez win. So what does this mean in terms of all these young people, these African American voters, these Latin X voters, these Asian voters these these native voters people coming out of the woodworks and at times, white allies too majority of white women voted Republican last night in terms of and so did majority of white men. But there’s pluralities of whites too So what are we to make about this? This Obama coalition is multiracial coalition.

[0:28:57 Richard] I think we have to first of all, acknowledge and credit the work of women women of color, especially in this election, because, ah, the percentage of women has got a 20% in Congress. Ah, it’s the largest percentage of when we’ve ever had in Congress. Native women. Uh, lad. Next women from Texas the first time ever Muslim women, black women from misuse for the first time in history, Queer women. It’s just an amazing sign of hope for me. I think it is an educator. I think about the importance of our institutional contexts, the university setting. Students who get to come here and be really engaged with each other and emerged and build relationships. Start realizing there’s more in common. There’s different right, and the issue of Allied Ship is really important. So, you know, I think one of the critical things we have is educators is our opportunity that we have to foster environments. Were students fill, they can connect with each other and they leave this place. I was talking to a group a fraternity men a few years ago, I told them I said, It’s possible for you to have an experience on this campus where you are never in the numerical minority or the power minority ever. That is a waste of your experience because you wanna have experience of being on the other side of the issue or being in the minority, because that will build your empathy reserves. And then I think that’s a lens. You see the world forever, and I think we’ll get to do a PSA faculty members is to really generate and prod and and get students that point where they feel supported in their identities. But also, I need to understand your experience more than that, because that will give me the empathy reserves so I can go out there and get to know people and understand the experiences. And so even though, for instance, maybe my identity minus societies are being representing this particular the way, this is exciting for me. So you know, why am I as a man excited about these women, a feminist? So I see that as a huge advantage and a hugely important thing for society’s hoax. I think we’re better off the society with more women in political power. So for me, I’m I’m absolutely excited in the exalted about the fact that there is this piece of people coming together and finding intersections of interests of similar goals and even realizing like we don’t agree on everything. But we do agree on this idea that we should be working collaboratively. Or we do agree that your vision for the future is a vision I can buy into, at least significant enough that I would vote for you over an opponent who’s using fear and hopelessness as their so-called the driving force.

[0:31:28 Peniel] Very well said, My last question is, What do you think this all means for 2020?

[0:31:34 Richard] Yeah, I was telling my students, You know, you think we’re done, You get a couple months off, we’re back into it for 2020. What it means in my perspective, is it’s gonna be interesting to watch what happens on a state level. So let’s see what’s happening as far as what are the policies and the laws that are enacted to make sure we don’t have Kemp. So situation going on again, we’ll be legislation coming up looking at those kinds of things. Redistricting senses is coming up. You know, the census will actually have an impact on all these different things, and I So I think there’s so much at stake. So we just said This is the most important election of our lifetimes. 2020. We even more important, right? So, uh, and of course, what does it mean on the executive level about Trump’s So Trump’s two year window? You made the analogy to what Obama have for the 1st 2 years. That Window’s shoot is closing. Its gonna be this very interesting time where, UM, you’ve got a chief executive who’s gonna be at loggerheads with the House, and they will probably likely a lot of obstruction or a lot of tension happening. Their investigations, you name it. So the question becomes, Do people say, Well, that’s because we inflected Democrats. It’s a bad thing. Or do they realize this is the beauty of what checks and balances mean? This is what the Founding Fathers wanted to see happen, right? Ah, and so it will be interesting to see how it’s framed. If you saw today’s press conference that the president had is a, uh, it is something to watch to sort of see him spin last night. It’s some kind of victory and, you know, basically continue to vilify the press because the president forced into a role beyond the fourth estate. They had been the check and balance that the Congress is not provided. So hopefully at precious off somewhat because now there’s actual, uh, coequal branches doing that work for them. Um, so in fact, that’s the question about who’s going to run for president, who’s gonna I’m just excited by the fact that Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum were not known three years ago. There was better or yeah, these people. So there are people literally and one thing that you ever talked about is this generational thing. People are like trying to get the bit. Give me the front runners that Joe Biden. Is it Bernie Sanders?

[0:33:50 Richard] I’m like, you don’t know who it is because give credit to our generation of Jerry’s coming after us, who were kind of saying, You know, I’m a step into that role, absolute. I’m gonna try this. Little cannot. The MJ, Hager’s and and the bigger rocks. They might not have won their elections, but they are definitely viable off the next cycle. They might run again. They might end up going into some other role where they’re advising new people. But I think the most exciting thing is the fact that, um, give Nancy Pelosi a lot of credit. Yeah, the Democrats found incredibly appropriate candidates for those communities. You gotta Connor Lamb in Pennsylvania fits that community of early. Well, you’ve got a Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in New York who fits that. They’re different people. You don’t have a template or a blank slate and say, Check these boxes. They’re finding people that fit those communities very well. And, you know, I’ve heard people who said, You know, I don’t really want to get behind a Stacey Abrams or an Andrew Gillen, but I respect those people. That’s progress, you know. And I think about the fact. And I think concluding messages for the young folks is that the incrementalism of the Torah politics is such that you can’t be unmotivated. You get the find ways to work in multiple ways, right? You can’t just sit and say it’s all about the election and I don’t care about anything or didn’t go my way. So I’m done. You have to sort of think about well, how can I think about leveraging the other places I work in the community work I do for the same goal, I think, to see MAWR attention to voter registration, challenging voter suppression, educating voters, educating future voters. Right. I’m kind of struck about sort of the collapse of civics education because people live. We don’t know what they’re voting for, what people do, for instance, what the attorney general does. Ah, what people think is that, Ah, military rolling. That’s the person who runs the elections. That’s a pretty important role. So you might want to have some attention to does that

[0:35:45 Peniel] and just the Nelson last night came awfully close. Kmart clothes are in close. Yeah, all right, my friend. Thank you for blessing us with all this knowledge in this wisdom, there’s been a great conversation. I love the optimism. I’m I’m on that train, it’s optimism fueled with realism, right? We realize the depth and breadth of the issue, but optimism about the future of American democracy.

[0:36:07 Richard] Well, I appreciate that, Peniel. And you know, you have been around for a little while, so we’ve we’ve seen some low points were literally, you know, having your heart ripped out in 2000. There’s there’s moments where you can say, Oh my gosh, this is the the very bottom of the well. But I think what’s amazing about this? You said, I think with a little bit more time we see the energy. We’re able to look at the progress being made. And I think, um, we work within structures outside of structures and radical positions and tempered radical positions. We work in different ways. So I think for me there’s a lot of reasons to be optimistic. And, you know, it’s okay to be, you know, upset and not happy and you know more in a day or two. But then you get up tomorrow. It’s not doing the same work. I mean, our ancestors did work that had to be 10 times as disillusioning as this, and they made progress. I think that’s we look to our history, our forebears, our foremothers. Ah, but this has been great. And I’m looking forward to hearing this episode and the future episodes. So this is a really cool podcast. Looking forward to being a fan and subscribe on.

[0:37:08 Peniel] Thank you for having us.

[0:37:09 Richard] Absolutely. Thank you.

[0:37:11 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P E N I E L J O S E P H and our website csrd.lbj.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you