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Election 2022 Special: What’s at stake in the midterms? · Apple News Today

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  Gideon Resnick, Narrating: Hi, I'm Gideon Resnick and this is a special series from "Apple News Today" all about the 2022 midterm elections. Over the next five weeks, we are going to examine what matters to voters, how the former president and the current one are impacting the elections, how we even got to this moment, and ultimately how these elections could help shape the future of the democratic process.
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  There is so much at stake this November and it's not just the balance of power in Washington. There is still a widespread belief among most Republican voters that the 2020 election was stolen. That claim is false and has been disproven over and over. But most people of both parties believe that our democracy is in crisis, albeit for very different reasons. Eighty percent of Americans say the country is more divided than ever, with two-thirds in a recent "CBS News" poll saying they fear more political violence is coming.
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  My first guest today is Julian Zelizer. He's a historian at Princeton University and the author and editor of nearly two dozen books spanning decades of American political history. He says that for all the strains that our country has gone through, from the Civil War to the Great Depression to the tense battles during the Civil Rights era, this moment is yet again testing the strength of our democracy.
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  Julian Zelizer: It's fragile, it's weak. Our democracy, I think, is struggling at this point. Anytime you're having conversations about overturning elections and denying the results of elections, the democracy is not doing well.
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  I wanted to start off by talking with Zelizer because he has to do the hard work of putting current events into historical context, even while they're happening. So, I asked how this moment stacks up against other moments of turmoil throughout our history.
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  Zelizer: It's different and it's as bad as some of the earlier times, and not quite as bad but still dangerous. Meaning you can look at the history of the country and obviously you can look at the Civil War and say, "Well, at least we're not there." And that's true. That is the ultimate breakdown of the democracy. Or you could look to a period like the 1960s and say, "Look how divisive our politics can get and look how bad our leaders can become." Vietnam, Watergate, etcetera. But I think that kind of history just shows that this is a really kind of delicate and uncertain project that we are embarked on. And so, when we are in one of these moments where lots of things are hitting the system all at once, the lesson is take it seriously because it can get a lot worse. And certainly, I think we're in one of the worst places. It's not a civil war, but we've seen a normalization of so many problems that almost are seeming routine. That we don't notice them or we don't feel an urgency to deal with them, that that's not a healthy set of conditions for the government to work or the politics to work.
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  Resnick: Yeah, and so I'm curious how you think we actually got to this moment.
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  Zelizer: Since the 1970s, we've seen kind of problematic developments in campaign finance. We had this period in the '70s, we tried to reform the system after Watergate. In 1974, Congress passes reform; some of those reforms work. But over time, we've seen interest groups really kind of learn how to play the system. We've seen just floods of money go into politics. And we end up with a Supreme Court decision that allows this to happen. We are in a place where private money has just immense power over political decision making. So, that's a big structural development. But then we have another side of, how did we get here? When I think you've seen in the Republican Party, a genuine radicalization of a party take place before our eyes. I date it back to the 1980s with the rise of figures like Newt Gingrich. But we see a party that doesn't see guardrails to what you're allowed or not allowed to do. So, it's a combination of these big changes in how politics works to decisions that parties and leaders have made, and those are coming together right now as we approach midterms.
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  In 2020, Julian Zelizer wrote a book all about Newt Gingrich and the introduction of what he calls the "New Republican Party." He argues that to understand the rise of Trump, you have to start with Gingrich.
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  He is an ambitious Republican from Georgia. And Gingrich's ascendance to House Speaker really pushed the limitations of Washington, that it helped turn politics into even more of a blood sport, and also provided a template for how Republicans could get media attention.
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  Here's how Marc Rosenberg, a former Gingrich aide, described his tactics in a "PBS Frontline" documentary from the '90s.
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  [START FRONTLINE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Marc Rosenberg: Gingrich learned that the easiest way for someone to get access to the news media was to be controversial, and in particular to be quotable. And so, from the very beginning of his stay in Washington, he was quotably controversial.
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  [END FRONTLINE ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Zelizer: Well, Gingrich is coming into politics in the 1970s and '80s. He's part of a generation of Republicans that was pretty desperate. Republicans had been out of power in Congress since the 1950s. And Gingrich, in particular, is someone who reaches the conclusion that Republicans essentially have to do anything to win. And that means all these norms that are so important in Washington at the time - bipartisanship, civility - Gingrich says get rid of all that, say what you have to say, destroy whoever you have to destroy, take any political process and weaponize it, and forget about other concerns. Don't worry about governing. Don't worry about the health of democracy. And he was really a pivotal figure because lots of people say stuff like that, including elected officials. But what's different: He rises in power. He becomes, ultimately, the Speaker of the Republican Party. So, he helps to legitimate this kind of thinking, this new vision of partisanship, meaning just ruthless, no guardrails partisanship as a party position. And I think since then, you've had waves that keep coming into office, the Tea Party and ultimately Donald Trump as president, who keep going further and further on the path that Gingrich crafted.
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  [INTRIGUING MUSIC]
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  Gingrich and Trump were allies in the 2016 election, even at moments when some others in the party had turned their back on Trump. At one point, Trump even considered Gingrich as a possible running mate.
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  [START CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  President Donald Trump: I'll tell you one thing, folks. I'm not saying it's Newt, but if it's Newt, nobody's gonna be beating him in those debates, that's for sure. Right?
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  [CROWD CHEERING]
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  [END CNN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Zelizer says Gingrich's prominence is an incredibly pivotal point on the timeline if we're to understand the rise of not just Trump, but the current Republican Party.
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  Zelizer: You can just look at the period in the '50s and '60s, where obviously you had extremism in the Republican Party. You had Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, who many people think was a predecessor of a lot of this. But he doesn't ultimately become a party leader. He's actually, in the end, kind of purged from those inner party circles. And the difference with what we've seen in recent decades is that kind of politics has risen to the very top of political power.
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  In 2016, we saw this most clearly with the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency. At Princeton, Zelizer works with a bunch of scholars to make historical assessments of each president. Earlier this year, they released their assessment of Trump. And they argued, quote, "Trump was not the cause of the political divisions that defined his term in office but rather was a product of long-term trends in Republican politics and American polarization more broadly."
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  Zelizer: It's an attempt to say, first when you look at the Trump presidency, there's obvious reasons to say, "Wow, we just haven't seen that." As we record this, the former president said in an interview that he can essentially think something is declassified, and that means it's declassified. And statements like that are not what we've heard from presidents or some of the tweets that happened when he was in the oval office. It wasn't the kind of rhetoric that even the most hardened partisan, like a Richard Nixon, would ever have used, but it came from somewhere. There was a reason that he became the nominee. There was a reason that even as he did all of this, most Republicans were okay with it, and their support did not diminish.
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  Zelizer: There's a reason when, even as a former president, he's under multiple investigations, unlike anything we've seen, his support seems to be stronger in the Republican Party. So, I argue that you need to understand how has the Republican Party changed before 2016 to explain why they were in a position to host, [LAUGHS] essentially, the Trump presidency and to support it. You have to understand how did communications and the media change to really understand why did his tactics work politically in terms of shaping the narrative of the news and getting the information he wanted out there. But he took some of the perils of the moment, he exploited them, he capitalized on them, but he took 'em to such new levels, he basically was unbound, and he didn't care about the consequences of exploiting those problems. And so, it put us in a new place where now there's a precedent for future presidents or political leaders in Congress to use those same tactics.
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  Resnick: I wanna talk also… you mentioned that the Republican Party had changed before 2016 and, sort of infamously now, in 2012 there was this audit, or autopsy as it was, of the Republican Party and its fortunes in presidential elections after Obama had won his second term. And one of the huge takeaways was demographics are such that they are really, really favoring Democrats at the moment and Republicans therefore need to change the way that they communicate to a lot of those voters. And Trump sort of seemed to have flipped that on its head. So, what did happen [LAUGHS] there between 2012 and 2016?
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  Zelizer: Well, part of it, those autopsies, those predictions underestimated the power of anti-majoritarian institutions that we have discussed. And those are all in place. They're not going anywhere. And so, a party that doesn't necessarily broaden its reach might still win, especially if it can retain total loyalty from its constituency, which Republicans, and certainly President Trump, was generally able to do. Red didn't turn blue, red stayed red in most cases. And so, when you have that and you have the electoral college and the filibuster, all those demographic predictions might not be as accurate as we think. And the second, which was a warn warning at the time, is you don't know how constituencies are going to kind of be one decade, two decades later. And there's some signs that the former president was able to bring some parts of the Latino community, for example, into the Republican coalition. And the fact is, we just don't know. White working-class voters whose economic interests don't align with a lot of Republican policy liked what he had to say on culture and liked what he represented. And he found a way to keep them exactly where they were. So, demography isn't actually destiny all the time in politics. Institutions matter a lot and people's identity can change. And so, I think at this point, it's unclear if those predictions are really gonna play out.
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  Resnick: Okay, so we can move on from the future for a moment and talk about the present. You have done these assessments of Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump. Joe Biden, of course, is now in office. Does his election change your view of the pathway that the country was on and all of these assessments that you've worked on?
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  Zelizer: Certainly to me, and I think to some of my authors and a lot of analysts, he's managed to pass - President Biden - a lot of legislation which seemed impossible, frankly, from even the moment he took office. And I know there was a lot of enthusiasm you had, finally democratic Congress, but I think for a lot of hardened analysts, everyone, including myself, looked at very narrow majorities, the power of Republican opposition. And yet, he's found ways to get a lot of bills through. I mean, some of the things that had been broken under President Trump, such as international alliances which had been front and center in Ukraine, in a remarkable way, he's found ways to bring diplomacy back very quickly and to make alliances a centerpiece of national security. And so, for me, and I think a lot of others, they'll kind of be part of his presidency to wrestle with how this happened and even found Republican support in a few areas, tepid, but it found a little of it, but that goes against the narrative. So, I think those are really important and relevant things that don't necessarily fit the main arguments that have been made about the past few years.
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  Resnick: Does that tell you anything about the strength of institutions at all? That it is possible if they do get degraded in one presidency, that they can return in some way, shape or form in the next.
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  Zelizer: A little bit. I mean, I'm still on the side where I am struck by how much they can break down. I guess I started my career with an assumption of their strength and vitality, and what's been remarkable the longer I've been in this and the longer I watch is how easily they can be broken. So, in some ways, I expect them to be strong. The Constitution is a very robust system, and this system of federalism and separation of power, it's very elaborate. What was remarkable to me is how, with President Trump, for example, you could just ignore things and do whatever you want, and there isn't any kind of pushback. So, Biden going back to some semblance of normal or some more stability isn't so much of a surprise, but it doesn't necessarily restore the confidence because we can see all around it, all these elements that are very dangerous and are front and center, as much as his ability to govern as what we would call a more traditional president.
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  Resnick: Yeah, and to that end, our country is facing unprecedented threats. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, 69% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans said that democracy was, quote, "in danger of collapse." Both of those sides have very different reasons as to why. But I guess the question that's on my mind is whether democracy is sustainable in a country where we're not all sharing the same realities.
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  Zelizer: Um… I… That's a really tough question. At the most fundamental level, no. I mean, democracies can survive bitter division. I think democracies can survive really robust debate. We saw this. I mean, look, I study the '60s a lot of the time, and the intensity of the fighting over Vietnam, over race relations, over culture was as intense as anything we see today. And our democracy endured. We've had some very good moments, I think many people in both parties, frankly, would argue. And it didn't break down after that. But now, this danger is we don't even really know what's happening. Or a lot of people are fundamentally disagreeing over the basic facts. That makes democracy hard because you have no common foundation. So, I often tell students, in the '60s, you have these very heated debates over Vietnam and what should we do. Should we be there? Should we withdraw troops? Should we bomb more? Whatever. There were debates that were on the streets of this country every day. Today, I would imagine like, you'd have the debate being: Are we even in Vietnam? With some people saying, "Well, we're not there. Nothing's actually happening." Even as body bags come back right in front of our eyes. And if you're in that space, how can a political leader lead the country in a direction? How could even leaders of different parties form those difficult compromises that are necessary for legislation? You can't do it 'cause they see different worlds on issues like the climate or issues now like an election outcome.
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  Resnick: Yeah, and it makes it difficult to ask this and sort of think about this, but are there lessons then that we can draw upon historically to perhaps see a brighter future given what you just said, given that we don't even have 100% shared facts?
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  Zelizer: Well, yeah. I mean, look, you can think of the shift from the 19th century to the 20th century. The 19th century, you still had a press that was dominated by partisan newspapers. Literally. They were owned by the parties. They were run by the parties. The information was meant to ensure party victory. And for all its flaws, for much of the 20th century, we had better journalism. We had journalism where reporters, they weren't totally objective, but they tried to be. They believed that should be the professional norm. You had really high-quality columnists and newspapers like "The New York Times" or a Walter Cronkite who, for all their flaws, were providing pretty good news. And so, there you could see we moved from worse to better. And in terms of other elements of democracy, I would go back to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 or parts of Reconstruction, where we took really broken elements, where people were disenfranchised, where the forces of reaction and anti-democratic forces had been winning, and we reversed it. You know, when Congress votes and Lyndon Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, that's a historic victory for improving our democracy and making our democracy real. So, I always look back, and that's possible again. Jim Crow was overturned. And so, when we look at elements now to undercut the power of the vote, we can still reverse that.
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  Resnick: I want to close this conversation by invoking [LAUGHS] a phrase that we hear so often now that it feels like it's trite, that this election is the most important of our lifetimes. We've heard it for years and years now, but how are you viewing the importance of what happens in November?
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  Zelizer: I mean, look, every election is important, and midterms and presidential elections have huge consequences. But now, why this at least feels so important for many people is it's working at the level of partisan power in Washington and what's gonna happen in all these key policy areas. But it also has to do with this question, which makes it even more serious than some others, of: Is our democracy healthy? I think if we move in a direction where many election deniers win office and the outcome is read as legitimating January 6th rather than negating what January 6th was about, that means we're in a worse place and that means we're heading in a path where it becomes harder and harder to fix the problems we've discussed. And so, I don't know if it's the most important election ever. We never know really, and we don't know for sure until the consequences become clear. But I think those questions being front and center in the midterms and then in 2024 make this extraordinarily important not just for one party over the other party, but for the health of this system that we are all part of.
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  Resnick: Yeah. Julian Zelizer, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.
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  Zelizer: Thanks for having me.
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  Julian Zelizer is a historian at Princeton University and the author and editor of nearly two dozen books on American political history.
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  Next week, my conversation with Amy Gardner, a reporter on "The Washington Post" Democracy Team. She's been writing about the rise of election deniers, candidates who still refuse to accept the results of the last presidential election.
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  [START APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
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  Amy Gardner: It shows how much the lie about the 2020 election has completely taken over the Republican Party, how it has become a price of admission for many races in this country.
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  [END APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
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  That is next week on "Election 2022," a special series all about the midterms from "Apple News Today." I'll talk to you then.
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