September 29th, 2020 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raised her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room on Welcome Back to the second reading podcast for the week of September 29th. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. I’m happy to welcome Today is a guest, longtime acquaintance and friend Mark Z. Barabak, longtime political writer for the Los Angeles Times, who has been covering the 2020 presidential campaign closely. And we’ll ask him, I I can’t remember exactly how many campaigns that is, but we’ll we’ll ask mark about that. Uh, today we wanna talk about some recent writing marks done and get his impressions of the campaign. So welcome, Mark your at home in California. How are things there? You’re in northern California. And of course, you guys air sadly in the news again.

[0:01:17 Speaker 1] Yeah, the fires were raging again. Um, you know, we’re I guess you could break this sort of on a curve, if you will. I mean, I’m standing on my front porch and I can actually see Ah, hillside mountains that are maybe 345 blocks from my house. I mean, there were times when you could barely see across the street. I mean, I should make it clear. I I am not in immediate danger. I don’t live anywhere in the fire zone, but of course, knowing California has been blanketed with smoke and it’s, I would say, it’s hazy, but it’s not as bad as it’s been. And I do have some, actually, a friend who may be evacuating, coming to stay with that for a few days. So called, uh, you know, some good thoughts their way because it’s a scary time,

[0:01:58 Speaker 0] very scary. And I, you know, I grew up in Southern California and have this this memory of all that, and it’s but it’s just gotten so dramatically worse, it seems to me, um yeah, way

[0:02:10 Speaker 1] used to talk about fire season basically being maybe September. October. I mean, you know, there was a horrible fire a few years back a couple years after, So on Christmas, that kind of got fire season Now extends. You know, when you and I were growing up, maybe, as I said September October, but it’s it’s becoming like a July July to December thing these days.

[0:02:27 Speaker 0] Yeah, I know it is. It is incredible. Um, so I want I want to talk and I want to talk about some of the recent writing you’ve done from the campaign trail. And I want to start really with your most recent piece that you wrote with with Jenny Jarvie that is dated September 27th. And I know you were working on it for a while. The title kind of says it all. It’s going, you know, it starts with a pull quote from one of your interviews. It’s going to be like war voters. I 2020 election outcome with fear and loathing. Um, and you set the story, you know, soon in with a little excerpt, I’m just gonna read briefly its’s that goes like this. Candidates often say a presidential contest is the most important ever telling voters to act as though their life depended on it and the country’s future was at stake. Dozens of conversations with voters across the nation, from the west coast of the Upper Midwest to the east suggests that this time many people really believe it. Punished by pandemic, buckled by economic hardship and riven by relentless partisanship, America is facing an election unlike any in modern times, a vote shadowed by menace and fringed with paranoia, much of it fed by the occupant of the Oval Office, who incessantly acts the undermine confidence in the river in the result. So I wanna talk about this, and what your take away was that the story really is Ah, you know, an incredible mosaic with, ah lot of interviews from around the country and and tell me what you know, tell us a little about this story and what you were trying to capture. Well,

[0:04:01 Speaker 1] I want to give due credit. I’m not gonna reel off all the names, but I wrote the piece, a zoo said, with contributions from Jenny in the South and a half dozen or so other reporters all around the country, and I guess what we’re trying to accomplish. You know, I have ah, former editor at the L. A Times. His name is Dean Baquet. I’m not sure whatever became of him, and he used to say, and I love this. He used to say that Ah, campaign is the opportunity to tell the story of a time and place. So what we really wanted to do with that piece was just sort of say, you know, to put it another way, you know, kind of where is America’s head at? I mean, this is just such a crazy election. I won’t, you know, belabor it. Obviously, we’re all living through these times Pandemic, you know, bad economy. Just just odd. Very scary. Very, very fraught times. And it kind of came together. We had these calls quite frequently, You know, where the staff gets together, we kick things around. And I had a colleague who was one of his folks was in the story, was in Florida who was interviewing people for another story and came across this woman gal out with her father and son who are buying plywood. She she was in the story, you know, getting ready to board things up on and looking to secure. Ah, water supply A safe water supply. When, uh, you know, the apocalypse comes on Election Day. And then another report chimed in with talking about how he had read where gun sales are up dramatically and we included that of vote dramatically among among black Americans. So it’s sort of like, you know, three idea was Well, if you write a story just quoting Trump’s important thing what they all that crazy Trump supporters. If you didn’t start to just said black people, people say, Oh, well, that’s just crazy black people. But you know, the idea was a show, you know, again, not this you know, both sides or or false equivalence. But just to show that there is this raging, uh, paranoia, fear and loathing, a phrase that both you and I But it is there, and it’s widespread, and it’s not just on the left, and it’s not just on the right is out there, and it’s very pervasive across the political spectrum,

[0:06:00 Speaker 0] you know, we’re talking about dating ourselves and, you know, one of the things that really struck me about this story was you know, really, how how not familiar this is. You know, in the last, you know, for the last few cycles, you have to go. I mean, there’s a point in the story where I think you even you quote an academic and parentheses, saying, Look, this is not entirely novel, but it has been a while since it’s felt quite this general sense of of, you know, the center will not hold in the sense that you know the sense that this thes thes feelings of threat what you’re calling paranoia but also, you know, kind of decay and faith in the system is just so widespread. It’s been a while.

[0:06:44 Speaker 1] Yeah, yeah, I did a piece earlier this year. That sort of drew the contract of 1968 which, you know, was a horrible year of assassination and riots and unrest in protest and drawing some parallels. Um, but you really have to go back that far. Um, but even then, I don’t think as you suggest, you had this this this complete, uh, lack of confidence, just just not just in the institution within the election itself. Now, you know, to be blunt, and I don’t think this is a Ah, partisan statement on opinion. You know, you do have a president who has used his office to call into question the legitimacy of this election, the veracity of it, the means by which we’re conducting this election and and that has contributed enormously to this. So you take pandemic, you take social isolation. You take all the stuff over living with. And you have, ah, President, who had, you know, rather than laying a call me handy will have raised a clenched fist. I think that’s contributed to it as well.

[0:07:48 Speaker 0] You know, I’m curious is you know, as you went through the raw material of the pieces of you know this. Yeah. It seems like you did kind of dozens of interviews for this story. You and your colleagues, um, you know, could you see the, you know, how clear was the influence of the president’s rhetoric in the raw material you had to choose from here?

[0:08:08 Speaker 1] Well, it was it was right out there on both sides. I mean, on the one hand, you had supporters of the president who were using many of the same talking points, if you will, that he does. I think we caught one woman, uh, questioning the validity of absentee ballots. You know, inferring that, uh, there was widespread fraud, or at the least it would be very easy. She talked about getting multiple applications and how you know she had the opportunity if she so chose to return multiple ballots and multiple names. That obviously echoes that. The president has said about, um, the veracity of the election legitimacy of mail in ballots, which it should be said. There is no evidence of White says, wide spread fraud. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, you had Democrats who were reacting thio what the president said, his suggestions that he won’t necessarily commit to a peaceful transfer of power, and that’s raised all sorts of concerns on both sides. So I would say that you know the president, whether you love him or loathe him or somewhere in between very much is shaping attitudes in the way people on both sides are looking at this election and how it’s going to come off. And more importantly, the point. A bit of the story was really looking at post election. It wasn’t trying to say whether Trump would win Trump would lose. It was saying how people look at the aftermath. You know what happens on Not on November 3rd. What happens on November 4th and thereafter. That’s what we’re really getting at.

[0:09:29 Speaker 0] Yeah, this story did a good job. I think of making sure you included, you know, examples. You know, there’s kind of, ah, you know, there’s a two by two matrix here of Trump supporters, Biden supporters, expectations of Biden victory, expectations of Trump victory. And you kind of you do a good job of filling all those boxes in the story. You know, I’m curious as you as you’ve been talking to people and you consider all this. We did a panel that at the together at the Tribune Festival about a year ago with, you know, three other national political journalists in addition to yourself and one of the things that we all talked about was the sense that at that point, when we were, you know, really, the Democratic primary was kicked into high gear and there were still, you know, a zillion candidates and Democrats were trying to game out. You know who they wanted to vote for, and Republicans were watching the race and doing a lot of handicapping. One of things we talked about on that panel that I think everybody is, I recall was struck by was how engaged in how closely, um, voters that people were talking to. We’re following the election in a way that, you know, was very, you know, reporter and inside Ary like at the time in the sense that I think, you know, I think it was Katie Glueck could kind of use provided an example that said, you know, yeah, I’m just asking somebody about who they preferred and they go into this parsing out of, Well, you know, if I vote for X, they’re gonna run well in this part of the country, but they won’t be able to win North Carolina, etcetera, etcetera. You know, Does it feel like that has given way to something more visceral? I mean, I was really it really That really occurred to me as I was reading this story, that there’s a lot of attention to the election, but the gut level assessment of it has changed.

[0:11:23 Speaker 1] Well, you know, it’s funny because I think I made the comment at the time that we’ve become a nation of pundits. Tried if there was like, Well, how is this gonna play in Ohio? And how is that gonna play in North Carolina? In a way that really hadn’t seen before? I think Let me see how how to put this. Yes, there. Is that Mr Role, uh, concerned that fear that some people have, Um but right alongside it is sort of a North cerebral, uh, portion of the electorate, which I can’t say how many times I’ve heard over and over again. Um, not crazy about Joe Biden. Any I shouldn’t say there are people you know other than Joe who are crazy about Joe Biden. But, you know, over and over again people not crazy about Bill Biden. But you know what? We’ve got to get trump out of the White House. Democrats talking or Independence. You don’t like the president? Yeah, we’ve got to get him out of the White House, so I’m willing to make that calculation So is less visceral in that instance, in the cerebral notion that hey, this is hey, may not be my first picking may not be my second pick, but anything to get Donald Trump out of office, so there’s a lot of Yeah, there’s a lot of visceral concern and fear, but again, it’s sort of that that that cerebral calculation that ah, lot of folks are making this time around.

[0:12:30 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I think part of it, you know, that I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think, you know, part of it is just a sigh was even saying that there’s a There’s definitely just a contextual shift from a primary election to a general election, but it does seem that there’s a lot to consider here. I mean, we were talking, you know, among the one of the polling teams. I’m on that recently about trying to pull the Supreme Court race and its impact or the Supreme Court nomination and its impact on the presidential race. And, you know, there’s a lot of complex calculations that air, you know, it’s a little unclear. I mean, it’s my default would be to say, Well, you know, we can’t really ask people what they think about the Senate nomination process, you know, in too much detail, and I still believe that at the same time, I think the the court nomination case, and we can kind of talk about that a little bit. Raises the issue of just how deeply some voters are thinking about this. And I think, you know, the Supreme Court nomination is actually one of the more complicated things that I think Ah, lot of voters do hold in their head that’s a little more average than you know. Do I think health care is, um, that’s a little more complicated thing. Do I think health care is important or not? That makes sense.

[0:13:46 Speaker 1] Yeah. You know, to quote your good friend Bob Dylan, we live in a political world, and everything these days is filtered through that everything. I mean, there are people who just don’t care. There are people who just don’t filter everything through a political lens. I think a lot of Ah, a lot of people on both sides. Everything these days is filtered through a you know? Does it help Trump? Is it hurt? Trump, help! Biden doesn’t hurt by it. My side, if you will going thio advance Or is this gonna hurt? So that’s sort of the reflexive response now toe anything and everything that happens, you know How is that? Is that going to unsettle the race? And interestingly, you know, we have some of this paradox where we’ve had these huge major seismic upheavals and and, you know, yes, I think the pandemic has certainly played a role in the presidential campaign. But, you know, I’m talking about revelations about about, you know, the Woodward book. And also, I could shorthand these things for political audience. But, you know, the Woodward book in the Atlantic magazine article about about the president supposedly denigrating troops. And people just keep waiting for, you know, this huge shift in the race. And, you know, you’re a pollster. It looks like, you know, four years ago, it looks like I’m gonna get myself in trouble here trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about. You know what an e k G, which I believe bounces up and down, you know, and this this looks more like a patient. To whom flatlined. I mean, you saw four years ago, um, again, up and down and up and down and up and down. This is pretty much a straight, you know. Ah, flatline. With very, very little movement. Despite these events, you know, Will something happen to change in the next five weeks? I mean, anything is possible, but, you know, that hasn’t happened

[0:15:19 Speaker 0] yet. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s interesting, you know, if we look, I think you’re right, and we look back at it on, but I was just kind of re examining some of the, you know, political science writing on this and some of the debriefs on it for some other things I’m working on. But, you know, on one hand, I keep saying to people, You know, look, is they ask about the polling, particularly in Texas, on the Biden Trump raced. You know, the pattern has been pretty steady. There has been some variants in it. You know, Trump has led every poll, but by a, you know, ah, margin smaller than one might have expected, and certainly smaller than we saw persist between the Democrat and the Republican in 2016. On the other hand, you know, a lot of things happened in October last year, you know, we’re still at the very end of September. You know, it would last election in 2016. We’ve yet to see you know, the you know, the access Hollywood tape, the various Comey announcements, a couple other things. But having said that, those things didn’t move the dialogue appreciably. If you look at the at the polling, it just, you know, they had little, you know, minuscule impacts of of questionable amplitude and we don’t know, even if if it was that that moved those things that could have been part of the just the noise and the lines of doing the polling so well and wear

[0:16:41 Speaker 1] Dio there was a great line and I can’t remember who are aware, but actually it makes someone oxymoronic. I think there was only clever and witty on Twitter, but there was and someone said, Maybe the October surprises. There’s going to be 500,000 huge things of consequence and nothing will change in October. So maybe that’s our October surprise this year.

[0:16:58 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I think you know, I think it comes from you know, I mean, can you change partisanship? And, you know, now the you know, as you alluded to and you know what you were saying a minute ago? Is there anything that will change people’s view on either side of Donald Trump, and so far, it just doesn’t look like it. And that kind of, you know, and so, you know, So that leaves me, you know, and I’m thinking about this myself. I mean, what do you think about the latest, you know, huge monumental story per your description on the trump financials, and you know, this big, You know, it was, you know, 9000 word New York Times story over the weekend and with more follow ups promised. I mean, it has a lot of different strands, and, you know, I don’t know if any of it sticks other than to reinforce pre existing positions, you know? What do you think?

[0:17:46 Speaker 1] You know, I think first of all, you know, to tip my hat, I think was a phenomenal piece of journalism and great work. Uh, by the New York Times. I mean, look, I think there is a group of Americans who, if Donald Trump were to take a covert swab and shove it up someone’s nose and effect on Fifth Avenue. We vote for him anyway,

[0:18:07 Speaker 0] and I think there’s a

[0:18:08 Speaker 1] swath of Americans who, if he

[0:18:10 Speaker 0] walked

[0:18:11 Speaker 1] across the Potomac and hand, delivered a vaccine to Tony Fauci would vote against Trump regardless, nothing’s gonna change these people. Um, that said there is, you know, a group that is persuadable. I don’t think it’s a large one, but I think more significantly, what this does, you know right now is supposed to really believe put a big an asterisk next to that as you choose you. If the polls are to be believed, the president is behind, not behind nationally, he’s behind in the battleground states behind in enough states that he will lose in the Electoral College if things happen as they look in the polls right now, he needs to make up ground and any day that he is not making a ground any day that he sends defending his taxes or talking about $70,000 in hair styling right up that sort of any day. And there’s only 35 left between now and the election. Any day. That is not, uh in which he is not gaining ground in which he is not on the offense is a day that is lost. So to me, that, perhaps, is the greatest impact is what they call the opportunity cost.

[0:19:09 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. And I’ve been I mean and we’re in such a We’re in a weird, speculative world here and in a weird, speculative world about, you know, the cognitive space of voters which, you know one always has to be really careful about. You know, I’ve been trying to subdivide this into, you know, things that are not enabling trump the president to make up ground because he has to talk about things that he’s failed at and things that, you know, give him a chance tow. Avoid the topics that he wants to avoid. I mean, he needs to avoid Thick khanna me and and his handling of the pandemic. Written largely, he needs to avoid things that point to this election is a referendum on him. You know, in that sense, I think that the Supreme Court vacancy gave him a little bit of a respite because it it gave him an issue that he could that enabled him to talk about, you know, on this being not just a referendum on him, but, you know, but one alternative, you know. Ah, a choice between two different routes. In this case, the Supreme court route and the route on all these on the on the involved issues between he and Biden. There are elements of the financial of the of the New York Times story that, if it could really take, might actually have an impact on those persuadable voters that you’re talking about. But I don’t think it’s. I don’t think it’s the angle that’s getting the most coverage. I don’t think it’s the tax angle. I think there are probably other elements that are a little bit more in line with corruption and self dealing. You know, in some ways you know it is it is a monumental, great piece of reporting, but it’s almost a Ziff. The size and scope of it is a little bit, too. It’s disadvantage in terms of affecting voters because there’s so much in there. And I think it’s, you know, the coverages cycling through a lot of it,

[0:20:58 Speaker 1] Yeah, although I would say there are a couple of things that are pretty resident and clear cut to people you know, $750 a year in taxes is a bumper sticker, right? I mean, you know, if you complete it on a bumper sticker. Pretty good. Rule of thumb. If you could fit on a bumper sticker, you know, $750 in federal taxes you could fit on a bumper sticker. $70,000 in, you know, deductions for hairstyling. You could fit on a bumper sticker. So, you know, again, I don’t want to make too much of this because, you know, time and again

[0:21:25 Speaker 0] we’ve

[0:21:25 Speaker 1] seen, uh, the the what Seemed like, you know, huge revelatory moments that have very, very little impact. But, you know, I mean, to put it simply, you know, you have you have all your sort of degrees I’ve written, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, ad nauseum over the years. It’s really very simple. If it’s Trump versus Trump, there’s no way he can win that. If Trump versus Biden, then the president has

[0:21:47 Speaker 0] a Yeah, I agree with that. Now, speaking of these candidates and and, you know, for, you know, before he ran out of time, Um, you know, I wanna ask you a little bit about Kamala Harris. You and I have talked about her quite a bit over the over the last couple of years. Particularly since obviously she was she was in the presidential race. But, you know, you tell us a little bit. You know, you’ve been writing about Kamala Harris for a long time from a pretty close perspectivas somebody who has written about politics from California and for the Los Angeles Times. Um, you wrote a couple of, really, you know, to my mind, definitive profiles of her when she was in the presidential race, one that ran in October 2019, that really was was somewhat prescient to my mind about the kind of faint praise for her in her home state and then another one when she got out of the race in December. We haven’t really talked about it since. She’s been resurrected to some degree as a vice presidential candidate. You know, I’m curious. Tell us a little bit, you know, tell the audience a little bit about your background covering Kamala Harris. And then I’m curious what you make of her as a vice presidential candidate now that she’s back in the limelight.

[0:22:56 Speaker 1] Well, I’ve known Senator Harris since she was district attorney of of San Francisco, and I always had a very good, cordial relationship with her on that good relationship is these days, given those stories you mentioned. But, um, you know, I have known her personally. We would have lunch now and again. Just a share. Political gossip and chat. She’s very good company. Whatever that is worth. Uh, fun, Uh, intelligent, thoughtful, good company. Um, you know, she she went from District attorney San Francisco to attorney general. A really tough race. Someone tell you the only really tough race she had statewide? I should say here that she knocked off incumbent district attorney in San Francisco, which was no, no small feat. Uh, then was elected the attorney general. Like I said, um, you know, toughest race she ever had running against. Uh, l A county’s, uh, district attorney won that race not by a lot, but one and then had, uh, pretty smooth sailing thio the Senate and then launched a presidential campaign. And I think if there was a fundamental, um, flaw what? The fundamental flawed or campaign. And it pains me to say this is a native Oakland er to to invoke the infamous, uh, Gertrude Stein line about there being no there, there. But you know, I think what? What? What Senator Harris. Lack of the presidential candidate was a seeming course set of values or principles. I think that was the impression that she was running basically for the sake of running, running with a sense that now was the time for ah ah, black woman, uh, to run as a representative of the Democratic Party, that is increasingly, ah, party of, uh, say minorities. But in some states, there there are plurality but of minorities of women. And so, you know, um, there just wasn’t didn’t seem to be a core set of issues or values that she was running on as a presidential candidate, and that hurt her in a way that I don’t think it has much an issue. Um, you know, there was a quote in that November story you mentioned from, Ah, long time student of California politics. He said to me that part of the business on the top of my head So I mean, I get it all together, right? But the idea was that part of Kamala Harris problem as a presidential candidate was that she could not decide whether she was a conservative Democrat somewhere in the middle of progressive on he said, You know, if this was, you know, before we knew she was gonna be on the ticket. He said, But if she was the vice presidential take, that problem would go away because she would be whatever the top of the ticket wants her to be. Um, you know, and that’s what we’ve seen. I don’t I don’t wanna make Kamila Harris team, uh, vacant or trivial empty suit in any way. But, you know, the role of the vice president is to do what? The top of the ticket? Uh, I should say what they agree upon in tandem is the role of the vice president. So she hasn’t had that that problem common Harris is very, very good. She’s, uh, just an absolute grind when it comes to preparation. I mean, we’ll just prepare herself thio fairly well. And you see, you see that in her. I don’t want to use the word performance because some of the Georgia But you see it, you know, when she said the Brexit breakout moment on Capitol Hill, whether it was, uh, quizzing, uh, Jeff Sessions or brand Cavanaugh or William Barr, she’s been very, very strong and very powerful in those moments when she’s been able to prepare a lot. Um, she there is a performative aspect of politics. Uh, that is a majority, but there is. She’s a former ah, courtroom litigators. So she she’s very, very skilled at that. She’s had a couple opportunities, will have a couple opportunities. She had her, uh, speech at the convention, which which, you know, not getting one socks off, you know, with serviceable to good andan. She’ll appear on the vice presidential debate, which again is sort of her forte. So finalize. I think she will be win, lose or draw. I think it will prove a better vice presidential candidate. Then she was a presidential candidate

[0:26:48 Speaker 0] not to get too far ahead of ourselves. But, you know, I can’t really help it if we’re talking about this, you know? So, Aziz, you look forward. I mean, should Biden win, you know, this This puts her back in the presidential tear. I mean, do you suspect then that the experience would, you know, fill in some of those gaps that you were You were saying? We were there and again, I I think you’ve been, you know, fair and and, you know, to do some work for you. I mean, you I think you do a good job of saying you’re not saying that she’s vacant or or incapable, but that there was a, you know, a certain absence at that point in her career in the presidential race. Do you think this scene, in a sense, fills that gap? If she, you know, we’re Biden toe win. And where were she to serve as vice president?

[0:27:34 Speaker 1] Yeah, I would think so. I would think so. She will be, uh, at Biden proverbial right or left hand, depending where she’s sitting. Uh, you actually see what role he gives her? I mean, you know, you know your history. You know that Vice, the vice president. We used to be basically, uh, nothing burger, but had become quite important, uh, from Walter Mondale on, you know, president, past the vice president’s specific things. So I imagine ah, lot will depend on on how she serves and what her role is. And vice president. But, you know, I think that you know, it can’t help but, uh, give her more grounding, more seasoning, more experience. And you know, definitely. You know, win or lose. I think there’s no question that as we start out, um, whether it’s, you know, November 4th of this year or four years down the road or eight years down the road, that as we start out, Kamala Harris would be the front runner to be the next Democratic nominee for president,

[0:28:27 Speaker 0] and you will have a lot of insight into that into that candidacy. Shouldn’t play that way, Mark. Thanks a lot for being here. I know you’re busy and working on a lot of stuff and have ah lot of head space to fill, so we appreciate you coming by. It’s been

[0:28:42 Speaker 1] a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[0:28:44 Speaker 0] All right, you take care. That’s it for this week’s second reading podcast. As always, you can find this podcast on the Texas Politics Project website along with you know, our historical archive of data and writing information about government and politics. Primarily, though not exclusively in Texas. That’s Texas politics. Utexas dot e d u thanks to our technical staff in the College of Liberal Arts in the liberal arts development Studio at the University of Texas at Austin. And thanks to all you for listening until next week. I’m Jim Henson and so long. Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin