January 6, 2025 • 59 mins
This United to Preserve: Democracy and the Rule of Law event, sponsored by democracyFIRST and features Jonathan Alter, an award-winning author, political analyst, documentary filmmaker, columnist, television producer, and radio host. The moderated discussion with Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija.
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Episode Transcript
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You're listening to the United to Preserve Democracy and the Rule of Law Speaker Series,
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presented by Democracy First.
Join us for a special conversation with Jonathan Alter, bestselling author and presidential biographer.
This conversation was recorded in Winwood, Pennsylvania in September 2024
and was moderated by Montgomery County Commissioner, Neil McKeige.
Jonathan, why don't we just start with his historical perspective and...
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Okay, when President Biden came to Montgomery County in the beginning of this year,
very different moment for us politically, but maybe not.
His speech was about democracy and it was near Valley Forge.
And what are your thoughts? What does it mean to have democracy on the line right now?
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Well, first, thank you so much for having me.
And I'm so thrilled that this is an interfaith event.
And thanks to everybody for coming and listening.
So, I've covered 10 presidential elections.
I started when I was quite young and I was working for almost 30 years for Newsweek.
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And every time the politicians would say,
this is the most important election in our lifetime.
And at a certain point, I'm going to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I wrote a biography, as you mentioned, of Jimmy Carter, 1976,
Jimmy Carter against Gerald Ford, even 1980, Jimmy Carter against Ronald Reagan.
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You might have felt very strongly about one or the other candidate,
but democracy wasn't on the line.
It wasn't the most important election of everybody's lifetime.
But by the time we got to 2016, 2020, and especially 2024,
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the cliche that I had heard all those years is actually true.
This is the most pivotal election of any of our lifetimes,
because it's the only one where our system of government is on the line.
And the reason that it's on the line is because if you look at the essence of democracy,
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the essence of what was established by George Washington,
you keep coming back to this question of the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power.
And so when George Washington decided not to run for a third term in 1800,
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King George III, who was still on the throne, said,
if George Washington steps away from power, he will be the greatest man in the world.
And he was.
And when you think about that precedent, that through so much of human history,
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either power changed because you were killed or you died.
And we had a period in the Roman Republic, and my next book is about Caesar and how they lost
their republic when there was the peaceful transfer of power.
But then 2000 years, almost 2000 years, where it was really the exception.
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And so this is on the line, because when Donald Trump would not acknowledge that he lost the election,
and to this day won't acknowledge it and has convinced 40 percent of the American public
that the election was stolen from him, even though 60 judges said it was not,
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that's what has precipitated this.
And then when you add to that, that he has embraced this idea that the
article two of the Constitution gives him the power to do, as he told some school kids who came to the
White House when he was president, quote, anything I want to do,
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then you realize a little better what the stakes are.
Because in our system, you don't get to do anything you want to do because you're president.
And so there are many other issues that relate to this, but I do think that
secure elections, the rule of law, peaceful transfer of power,
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are at the core of this just historic decision that the voters are going to make.
So one of the things that I've seen, wow, that's so much better,
one of the things that I've seen as an election administrator is every meeting we have in our
board of elections is people will come in with misinformation.
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They'll think that there's widespread fraud.
They'll think that non-citizens are voting.
And that in the past has led to violence here in Montgomery County.
So we actually had someone who fired gunshots into a campaign office slash it was a
someone who fired gunshots into a campaign office slash inauguration January 20th,
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saying that the election was stolen.
And while luckily no one was there, it showed me that the misinformation
directly leads to violence.
I mean, the whole of January 6th was really a response to this idea that there was widespread fraud.
And I mean, what can you say about that context?
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Because when we think about democracy, we think about people coming to their judgments.
We think about a public square where ideas are freely shared, but there's misinformation
and it's widely understood.
And how do you actually address that in this?
Well, this is a huge problem that is not going to be solved anytime soon.
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And we're going to have to figure out a way to return to the sovereignty of fact.
And we've traveled a distance from it in part because of technology
and people kind of reading what affirms what they already believe, kind of the journalism of
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self affirmation.
And I think this occurs on the left and the right.
And then a sense that other values are more important in journalism than truth.
Like if it confirms what I already believe, that's more important than whether somebody
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has figured out whether it's true or not.
So we're not going to solve that problem anytime soon.
But the more immediate problem is that when you have leaders who don't respect fact,
it worsens what is already a bad problem.
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So, you know, when one of the candidates for vice president says that the Haitians are
illegal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, when it's just not true, not to mention that they're
not eating pets.
The problem is a lot of people believe it when it comes from the top.
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And this is where like some historians are more into, you know, the collision of historic forces.
And I'm much more a believer in the great man and great woman theory of history, that leadership
really counts because when leaders give the people a permission slip to hate, a permission slip to
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make stuff up, a permission slip to attack democratic institutions, then you get this downward spiral.
And I think that's where we are now and we'll see whether we can start to come out of it later this year.
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So what kind of leadership, I mean, you mentioned George Washington, can you give me some other examples of leadership that would preserve the ideals of democracy and then eventually what do you think is needed right now?
So I mean, I like to look to Lincoln and my book ends with Lincoln because I was covering the Trump trial.
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I was the felony trial.
I was in the courtroom all 23 days just sitting 25 feet away from men, I consider to be the most dangerous threat to democracy in our entire history.
And one day after court, I walked down to just a few blocks away in lower Manhattan to a place that originally been the five points.
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You might remember there have been some movies about what the five points were like in the 19th century.
Scorsese directed and a gang of New York is about that basically.
And the reason I went down to the five points is that Abraham Lincoln in 1860, when he came to New York and he delivered an address at the Cooper Union that put him on the map.
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And he also went down to the five points and he listened to some children, some very poor children that he met there and he inspired them.
And at Cooper Union, Lincoln said, among other things, that might does not make right.
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Right makes might.
And basically the difference between somebody who believes in democratic values and somebody like Donald Trump believes in authoritarian values and looks to Victor Orban and Hungary and other authoritarians around the world for his inspiration for the way he views politics.
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The difference between those two worldviews is one of them is that right makes might and the other is that might makes right.
And that was really what was at issue in World War two to when you're talking about aggression and resisting aggression.
That I'm reputant obviously believes that might makes right.
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So I think there are ways of using various historical circumstances to position oneself. So then shortly before his death when he gave us famous second inaugural 600,000 Americans had died and Abraham Lincoln is being very hopeful.
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He's talking about the mystic chords of memory that will bring us back together and the better angels of our nature.
And so one need not despair because the fight for democracy is is an ongoing project. It's not a single battle.
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So, you know, if like some people say well you know if Trump wins democracy is dead I don't believe that I believe it will suffer a very serious blow, but that there are lots of opportunities to build democratic values,
even in in darkness and certainly there are many examples around the world of people working to transform authoritarian societies to democratic ones.
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You know when when Jimmy Carter was president.
Venezuela was the only democracy in Latin America in South America and now Venezuela is the only country that's not a democracy in in South America they have a left wing authoritarian leader.
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So, you know that there's there's there's plenty of potential for progress and you can get nothing is permanent in American politics you can always revive eternal ideas like democratic values.
So, can we talk a little bit you've written quite a bit about voting rights history and we spoke earlier about some of the legislation and reforms that are being proposed.
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When I think about what's undemocratic in the United States, at least the things that we all pay attention to.
It's the fact that if you're from Wyoming you have two senators and if you're from California you have two senators and you've got 70 times as many people I think in one state for the other it's that you're, if you're in Washington DC you have no representation in the federal government.
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We have the Electoral College, which is great for us in Pennsylvania because it means everyone is going to come here to campaign if that's what you're interested in or maybe it's not great for us.
But we have this, you call it an artifact but of the original negotiation over the Constitution and the fact that the smaller states wanted to say in the Senate and, and that has, in many ways, put us in a position that is undemocratic where we now have a majority on the Supreme Court that was appointed by presidents who did not win the popular vote,
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confirmed by Senates that don't represent a majority of the country and are now making rulings that are at odds with, with a majority of the country.
And obviously Dobbs is one of those, there are others that we can talk about.
But much of the focus that I had actually before I became a commissioner as an advocate was to pass HR one. Can you tell us a little bit about the current moment, the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and, and what's, you know, what's important about those.
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Well, first of all, everything you say about some of the structural problems of the Constitution is true. It's very frustrating, but we're actually a much more small d democratic nation than we've been in our entire history.
And so it's important not to get despondent about these things. The reason I say that is that we, I would argue, and a number of other historians agree, we didn't actually have anything.
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That could fairly be called a democracy until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. You know, in, in the state of Mississippi, there was a period when you could count on one hand the number of black voters in the state.
You know, and so when and women were disenfranchised until 1919. And so the story of American history is really the story of the expansion.
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Yeah, so, so I shouldn't, I shouldn't say that the present is the most democratic, but maybe 20 years ago was about the most democratic that we've ever been. There have been some reversals, and I just want to mention two and they're both Supreme Court decisions.
By the way, the Supreme Court in a democracy is under no obligation to follow, you know, what the polls say people favor. I mean, I think the dobs decision is terrible, but they shouldn't have gone the other way just because polls show that people support abortion.
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It's not the way judges are supposed to rule. But there were two decisions, the Shelby decision, which invalidated the Voting Rights Act, and then the most recent decision on immunate presidential immunity that were terribly undemocratic,
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basically, the widespread setbacks in voting rights and an expansion of voter suppression and what HR one would do is basically restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a number of other things to enhance democratic participation
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like gerrymandering and I don't want to go through all the particulars of the bill, but it's a very important piece of legislation and something very significant happened at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, which is that Chuck Schumer said that if the Democrats are able to
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have the same control of the Senate, which is a big if, and most hundreds would say it's not likely, but it is possible.
And they get control of the House and the White House, that he would on the first day that would be January 21 after the after Kamala Harris was sworn in, they would ask HR one, and they would suspend the filibuster.
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So they'd only need to do it with 50 votes and then the tie would be broken by in this scenario, Vice President Tim walls.
So that's the reason that HR one is important is this question in this election is not between a, or just between a setback for democracy and the status quo.
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It's between a setback for democracy and a huge important advance for democracy that is possible under this John Lewis Voting Rights Act legislation and the Democratic Party is very united on this and I wanted to say just to keep it a little bit bipartisan
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The politician I got the closest to too close to in my life in my career was John McCain as I explained in this book and and so this isn't really about how partisanship.
And I think all you have to do is listen to somebody like Liz Cheney, by the way, would not be for HR one but you know is very eloquent on the stakes in this election to realize that this isn't about like whether you want taxes to go up or down or what your
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feeling is on this policy or that policy. It's about core issues that go to who we are as a country, we are as a people, and what we will do to defend what we hold dear.
And this is where in my own mind I've been kind of thrust back to the story of my father which I just want to tell with your indulgence.
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Yeah, briefly. So, in 1941, my father was a Jewish kid from Chicago who went to Purdue University.
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When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he, you know, was very happy in college he had what they used to call a swell convertible and he had a girlfriend or wasn't my mother yet but
he was very happy, but democracy was calling him. And he went enlisted and he flew 31 combat missions in a B-24 he was shot down, originally got back to his base because they were Soviet troops in Hungary who came out with his hands up they were happy to see Russians.
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And George H.W. Bush had a similar experience in the Pacific. He was the youngest pilot in the Navy and he was inspired by his graduation speaker at Andover who was the secretary of war, Henry Stimpson.
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And he went off on his 18th birthday enlisted and then he shot down and when he's in his life raft and all this was something I was covering in 1988 when Bush was elected president.
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When he's in his life raft. He was asked by reporters like me, What were you thinking about. And he said, I was thinking about Barbara, his fiance, and I was thinking about, you know, I'm going to somebody going to rescue me eventually a submarine rescued him.
And he said, I was thinking about the separation of church and state and people like me we laughed we snickered. Oh, Bush he's just trying to show that he hasn't sold out to the religious right, you know, and this is just a political thing.
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And I'm actually, all these years later really embarrassed that I snickered at George Bush, because he answered the call to defend democracy.
And I believe he actually was thinking about the Constitution, maybe not the separation of church and state, but he was thinking about the fundamental values that had motivated him to enlist and to fight.
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And the lesson for me is, we don't get to choose when it's convenient to go and fight for democracy. We do it when we must. And this is a time when we must.
And unlike my father and George Bush, none of us has to risk our lives to do it. We just have to work harder when it counts.
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All right, should we open it up to questions.
What are you supposed to do to change people's minds, because early and more, they don't want to discuss the issue.
Maybe the bed early to rise, get to work and organize. There's a lot of ways to be involved in the political process.
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And, and I mean, I don't want to get into the mechanics of campaigns but one of the things that technology has changed so like some people don't like knocking on doors.
You can call voters all over Pennsylvania, you know, and the computer like goes right through the, they dial the numbers and then they can talk to 2530 voters a night.
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And some of them are not going to want to talk to you but they're going to be plenty of others who are, are happy to, you know, chat a little bit.
So it really, and one of the things that's great about democracy building and whether in the United States or in other countries where I've witnessed it is that democracy building is community.
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And so even if you don't win a particular election, even if some people slam the door in your face or hang up the phone.
You are engaged in a noble act of trying to connect, get out of your phone off your phone away from the TV and actually talk to other Americans.
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And some people go, I don't really want to want to talk to, you know, people who are on the other side or whatever.
Those aren't the names that they're giving you to call into contact, you know, and they're giving you names of often they're independent voters.
And so it's a different people have different ways of making contributions.
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So I, when I was trying to, you know, I as journalists like I can't, you know, give money or anything like that, but I was trying to figure out what can I do and this is why I ended up
going to the Trump trial and and getting credentialed, which was very hard to do to get into the courtroom.
And it actually, I realized what I was doing in reflecting on a story about when I interviewed Richard Nixon in 1988 I talked earlier about the 1988 campaign.
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And I really wanted to meet Nixon before he grope. I've interviewed nine presidents, either before during or after they left office in Nixon's case it was long after he left office.
And I got him into Newsweek. And I said, How will history regard Ronald Reagan and Nixon said, Well, it depends if you're talking about history, the historians, because the historians are like you, they're liberal liberal,
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you're going to history or journalism or conservative, you're going to business. And, you know, this was a pretty perceptive answer and it's like, I call one of my sections like Nixon had my number like I felt seen by Richard Nixon.
And I realized like, what's my contribution to democracy, bearing witness. That's all that I can do. You can only, you know, I can't go into B24 like my father, I can bear witness somebody else, maybe they can dig a little deeper, you know, and support organizations that are promoting democracy.
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And people they want to get involved in campaigns, if not the presidential campaign, then local campaigns on either side, you know, so there's lots of ways to be involved.
Sorry to be so long winded about that.
So as the politician up here, I'll tell you some thoughts on on what it means to take action and to organize if you care about this. And I sort of have this unusual place where I grew up in Carbon County in rural Pennsylvania where really Trump won all of his votes.
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And I remember people flip from Obama to Trump in 2016. And then I also now I'm raising my kids and my wife originally grew up in Montgomery County where it has gone in the other direction. And I probably knocked about 20,000 doors accounted for myself and others.
And one of the key things that I've learned is that it's, it's essentially, I mean, quite literally a numbers game, right?
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And that's about 50% plus one. And I've been to places where the people wanted to, you know, say, get off the get off my lawn, and then I've been to other places where we had really thoughtful conversations about policy and what we could do if we got the right people in office.
And you never know which conversation you're going to have before you have it. But the key is to recognize that for us to make change and to see things happen differently or things not to happen to us but for us to determine what happens.
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It takes getting out of our echo chambers and not just talking to people we talk to every day but reaching beyond that and putting in the time and a lot of people are doing that for many different causes and issues.
Maybe it's a specific thing that you care about. Maybe if it's a candidate you care about.
And maybe it's the basic idea that people should vote and have their voice heard. So quick example, you know, I deal with a lot of conspiracy theories around the election.
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And someone said, if you think the election is so secure in Pennsylvania, Montgomery County, you should be willing to do an audit after the fact.
And I said, you know, we actually do two audits after every election. And I thought they'd come back saying, you know, this is why that's not a real audit or it doesn't count.
They'd say, oh, I didn't know that. Thank you for telling me. How reassuring. That was the response. So you never know. There are persuadable people out there.
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You just need to give them a chance and be willing to have the conversation.
Can I just say something about Montgomery County? I was I was laying it on the commissioner beforehand. So, you know, I talk in a lot of different places and when you're not in a battleground state, you know, you're asking people to get involved in another state.
It's a much harder sell. I mean, you are at round zero, not just of what's going on in Pennsylvania, but of determining this whole election, which will then determine a lot about the struggle between authoritarian and democratic regimes around the world,
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because America is a very powerful nation in terms of its example for the world. And so when democracy does well in the United States, it often does well in other places. One authoritarian ideas do well in the United States.
That's going to give aid and comfort to other authoritarians. I mean, I always like to say that Donald Trump has had harsh words for everybody in his party, the other party show business harsh word for every single prominent person you can think of over tens of thousands of tweets.
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One exception, he's never said anything critical about Vladimir Putin. And so, you know, the company that you keep is really important to how these larger ideas survive or or are harmed.
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And basically, if if Kamala Harris can't match or very likely need to exceed the margins that she got in Montgomery Montgomery County, the third biggest county in your state, she will lose and she will lose the presidency and everything that comes with that.
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So I don't mean to lay it on everybody. But if you don't stop wringing your hands and start ringing doorbells, it's all going south.
If she underperforms in Montgomery County, she will not be the next president.
Full stop.
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You know, it's kind of hard to get out there and get started and everything, but you know, we do it and while we're out there and we're talking to people, you feel kind of good about it and everything. And then when you're finished, you feel proud.
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You know, you know, you know, you do get this good feeling when you get out there and you don't convince everybody, but you get to talk to people and just connecting with everyone, whether the Republicans or not.
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They appreciate that you're out there making an effort.
Building community.
Yeah, very good.
Yeah, that's huge.
That's really that's it. Thank you for sharing. Thank you.
So, democracy is about the peaceful transfer of power. So after November the fifth, we could have a scenario where we're at 269 each, or it's too close to call in some important states.
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So what should be getting done now as we think about the rule of law and how that plays out over the next several months through to January and misinformation, violence, various because it could be unprecedented.
So what's being done to prepare for it.
Buckle up. It's probably going to be a bumpy ride.
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But it 269 269 because of something that just happened in Nebraska.
If if Kamala Harris carries Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan with the help of Omaha and Nebraska where they have this weird system.
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And they're going to be protected now it's going to be a while before we know that because Pennsylvania law doesn't require the counting of mail in ballots until after election day.
So that means that there's no chance that we'll know the results of Pennsylvania on election night.
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And it's going to be at a minimum a couple of days, quite possibly longer with all the legal challenges.
And, and you know the last time it ended up.
Okay, because even Trump appointed judges would not countenance these objections, because there was no evidence for them.
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But we can't rule out that, you know, it could go differently this time they could get a different judge in some of these cases, and you have some MAGA commissioners and certain Republican counties who are all set for all kinds of legal challenges.
And it's it's a real unknown and that's why a close election is very concerning.
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But, but there's no point in kind of going into a sense of dread beforehand because there's work to do and that the people I've talked to are more confident than I expected about what will happen on election day.
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Yes, there's a threat that there could be violence like there was in a precinct here in Montgomery County in 2020.
But overall, that election was really without usual irregularities that Trump's a home at Department of Homeland Security election guy said it was like the fairest election in American history, the Trump guy said this.
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So and the 2022 election went off largely without incident so it might be and there is a lot of lawyers who volunteered in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to be there to make it clear that if somebody is trying to have a whole workers trying to prevent somebody from voting who should be allowed to vote that they will recognize that there are consequences for that.
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So the concern right now I think is more about what happens after November 5th, then what's going to happen on election day itself.
Yeah.
One thing I would just add is the scenario you're thinking about is one there's also just the scenario where Pennsylvania decides the election right and, and it's very close and we're already seeing so in Montgomery County, anyone apply for mail in ballot.
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Raise your hands.
You will hopefully get that tomorrow.
Just so you know, and as soon as we made our ballots accessible.
We were the first county in the Commonwealth.
We got sued by the RNC.
And we got sued by the RNC.
And, and the Department of State has called it a frivolous lawsuit, but their argument was that we should do testing on all of the precinct machines that are going to be used before we send out any ballots.
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Which would have delayed our sending out the ballots by another few weeks, two weeks.
And we wanted to get them out now because one, we're legally entitled to do that to there are still cases that have been pushed to throw out ballots that have misdated dates on the outside envelope or if you forget your signature.
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Currently, those votes will not be counted. There was a moment where the third circuit decided that they should be counted because we know when you get your ballot, we know when you when we sent it to you and the data is immaterial.
But right now that case was vacated by the US Supreme Court.
And so those ballots will be thrown out.
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So when you return it, please remember to sign a data.
But I say this because the litigation has already begun right as soon as the voting has begun.
I think there's some before that as well.
And we expect a number of other cases.
But what worries me the most is that this has an impact where people then feel distrust in the process and where people think maybe I shouldn't vote by mail.
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Maybe I should wait for election day.
Well, you might not be able to make it on election day or, you know, if you if you vote now, you can make sure you you get it counted.
And that that could have an effect on turnout one just that creating distrust in the election.
So our job I think is to show that it's secure that one we're going to win this and that we have a number of options that people can cast their vote starting now.
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Yeah, I mean, I think overall this the idea of mail in ballots favors Democrats because Trump over the objection of his advisors continues to dis mail in ballots.
And it's just kind of stupid of him politically to do that because it's always better to bank votes early if you can.
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And he's very dependent on the weather if he has an election day strategy and there's a driving rain and Pennsylvania that's very bad for the Republicans.
So, you know, yes, there are these legal impediments.
But but I think that this is still advantageous for Democrats.
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I have a question here, we have over 100 prominent Republicans that have crossed the divide to support Harris.
Can you remember anything like that in your lifetime? And what does that mean for traditional party politics?
I actually do remember it was before I started covering politics, but in 1972, when Nixon won a 49 state landslide, there was a bumper sticker of the day.
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It said, don't blame me. I'm from Massachusetts.
That was the only state that went for George McGovern.
And there was a pretty big collection of what we're called Democrats for Nixon that year.
So there is some history of this.
But I think what I've never seen before, and, you know, I have to say, I do know too much about the history of American elections, like my family is like, give it a rest, you know, the election of 1888.
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The the number of people who worked directly for Donald Trump and are now against him strongly against him.
We've never seen anything like that, not even close.
And there's dozens of them who just feel that based on their personal experience.
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These are very conservative Republicans that he simply unfit for the presidency.
So, but yeah, I think the only sometimes people ask me like, what's the most comparable election.
And I say 1864 at the Civil War wasn't quite over. And Lincoln was running for a second term and his opponent was General George McClellan, it would been his famous his first general and dashing figure and basically wouldn't fight.
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So Lincoln had to replace him.
And McClellan claimed that he didn't want a negotiated settlement with the South, but if he'd been elected, he probably would have and we would now have Confederacy.
But at a minimum, he was against abolition.
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So if that election had gone the other way and in September of 1864, it looked like Lincoln was going to lose a couple months later. And then with some key victories on the battlefield, he, you know, he regained his political strength.
But I mean, I think, you know, I'd say the stakes are not this time are not quite as high as that. In the same way that what we've been going through is not as bad as the 1850s and what they went through in the run up to the Civil War.
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And, you know, we will, if he's elected, survive Trump, democracy will survive Trump in some form, even if it's dinged up.
I really have a problem with people who say, oh, I'm going to leave leave the country. He's elected.
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There's too much to do to stay and fight and protect democracy, protect people who are going to be literally put into camps.
You can't deport 8 million people without, which by the way, you can do a lot of unilaterally without Congress.
Without, you know, putting them into camps and some of the more honest Trumpsters have said, yes, there will be camps.
(44:52):
So, you know, I think a lot of Americans will have to decide, will I try to protect these dreamers and others who they want to send back to a country they never lived in.
And a lot of work for people to do if this election goes for Trump. That's why I strongly object to this idea of, you know, leaving a lot more family separation.
(45:21):
We're almost, but in closing, wanted to just put to both of you what gives you hope about the future of American democracy, both in your role over seeing elections here.
But, but Jonathan as a historian, what are you optimistic about?
Well, I describe myself as hopeful rather than optimistic and I am very hopeful and I end my book on a hopeful theme.
(45:47):
So, so far the judiciary has held, you know, we do have the Eileen cannons of the world who are potentially a problem and there could be more of them, depending on how the election goes.
But I think, you know, despite the Supreme Court decisions that have been problematic, it's, it's important to remember that last time around all 60 cases were dismissed and our judges still require evidence.
(46:28):
And that's so that's that's a real source of hope. I was very much inspired by the judge and the jury and the Trump felony trial. I was, you know, almost emotional in seeing how responsible and dutiful these jurors were and how seriously they take their responsibilities.
(46:49):
But I also think that in any society, it doesn't matter where it is, it doesn't matter, even in China, if you look at Tiananmen Square, you know, there is this thirst for freedom.
The flame cannot be extinguished. And at the end, the authoritarians lose. They eventually lose not not in certain societies of like long term where they've had authoritarian governments like in China and Russia for, you know, for hundreds and hundreds of years,
(47:24):
but in societies that have tasted freedom, real freedom, that taste never goes away. And so there's always a reservoir of love for our ideas and our precious democratic values that will power resistance.
(47:51):
It will change elections eventually, and it it will.
It will survive the cult of personality that we are now experiencing.
Yeah, you know, I think it's appropriate that you said cult of personality because many of the ideas that Trump has tested and brought to a level that we've never really seen before and all the norms that he shattered.
(48:25):
It doesn't really apply or translate to anyone else right now. I mean, we can talk about that and have a whole conversation, but JD Vance isn't really pulling it pulling it off.
And and so for whatever reason, you know, you have this person who shaped his identity while being on television and a showman for many, many years and was able to translate that into this, but very few others are.
(48:50):
And what really gives me hope, though, for this year and this election is that people genuinely understand the stakes and use the word freedom, which I think is helpful in the sense that when we talk about what is important about democracy,
it's not just the idea, the form of government, something you would talk about in a civics class. It starts with the ideal that we all have a voice through our vote, and an equal say in determining our own future.
(49:23):
And that is essential to the idea of freedom and most most viscerally recognized when you think of issues like reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.
(49:44):
And when you have the first first woman of color on a national ticket and you have someone who is able to speak to a majority of the country that has not been seen in the halls of power.
(50:05):
I think that's powerful. And I think there are a lot of young people. I think there are a lot of people who maybe when Barack Obama was first elected, we saw a historic turnout.
I think I think we could see something like that again, and a different coalition. People used to talk about what his coalition and his majority was like, remember, he won Indiana.
(50:29):
So there was no disputing what happened on election day because of how overwhelming it was in terms of the Electoral College.
And while people always ask me, how are you feeling about Pennsylvania? What's going on? Is it going to be, you know, this divided?
I actually don't read polls and I don't look at them at all. And part of that is because when I look at every year since Dobbs, whether it was Supreme Court race in this day, whether it was the US Senate race,
(51:01):
people turned out who would not have turned out before and it really changed the electorate in a way that was unexpected. And I think that's when things are going in the right direction is when you're seeing a broad majority that is enduring.
And that could be, you know, 2024 could be another step in that.
(51:25):
So I hope so. And I'm just going to make a quick, give a little plug here.
So there's cards from my book that you'll see on the way out where you can order it. And if you go to my website, you can get my email.
If you send me your address, I'll send you a book plate if you're interested in it.
(51:50):
But the reason that I'm sort of thinking about my book is that you just made a point that reminded me that even though I'm actually more scared than you are about what's going to happen here for a lot of reasons that we could talk about.
And I spent the day interviewing voters and came away today a little bit discouraged.
(52:17):
He asked me what was hopeful. I have other stuff.
But the reason that I'm hopeful is that in one part of the book, I write about how if you look at the history of residential elections, the candidate who owns the future almost always wins.
(52:39):
These campaigns are ultimately about the future. They're not about the past, even when Trump said make America great again.
He was talking about doing something in the future that took us back to the past.
But that make was an argument for his idea of what the future should be.
And I think that Kamala Harris is well on her way to not just because of her very upbeat temperament, which is also a big asset in politics and her almost flawless campaign to date.
(53:18):
She's well on her way to owning the future and playing to people's hopes rather than their fears. This is a hope versus fear campaign.
And what Trump does, and I think it's on top of everything else, really objectionable, is he trashes the United States.
(53:44):
Remember what outgoing president or former president Bush said after Trump's American carnage inaugural address on January 20 2017.
He said that was some weird s we just heard because Trump was trashing our country.
(54:07):
So basically, and he's continued to trash our country and and and appeal to people's fears and it works up to a point.
But ultimately, if you can get somebody who can channel our hopes and make the case for a better tomorrow and appeal to, as I said, what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.
(54:30):
You have not just a moral advantage, but ultimately a political advantage as well.
Well, the great way to one more.
Can we have one more of this woman in the blue as editor.
Okay, and up for a long time.
But one more, one more question.
I was very long winded and didn't give you a didn't give you a chance to ask a question.
(54:51):
So along the lines of hope and and the election, how important do you think is the the young vote like our young adult children.
How much could that turn in the election, this election.
So I think if young people voted voted if young people voted at the same rate of 65 plus voters, it would change the entire electorate.
(55:20):
One of the things that we're doing in the county is making sure that every college student knows that they can register here, or everyone who's away knows that they can still stay registered in Pennsylvania.
And trying to find the ways to communicate directly with young people is really important in in government and so much of what we do.
(55:43):
We rarely keep up with the times in terms of how to communicate and.
So that's that's a key I'm kind of giving a shout out to my Gen Z comm staff or Helen, who graduated from Bryn Mar just in May, or currently is grad yes.
She actually graduated a year early and is about to graduate.
Correct.
(56:04):
But it's it would change everything.
So if there's young people that you need to call right now and tell them to apply for their mail in ballot, please do.
A lot are inspired by Harris and the problem I think with younger voters is that a lot of them have known nothing but Trump and they don't really know it doesn't have to be this way.
(56:26):
You know, and so it's like an abstraction for them that they could have something better because, you know, they were they were, you know, 12 years old or something when Obama was president.
So I, I think that's kind of on older people to get them to understand even though they're hard to convince on democracy ideas because for a variety of reasons.
(56:54):
There are other issues beyond Taylor Swift, where you can have a conversation with them.
Great, great. Well, join me in thanking Commissioner.
Thank you everyone.
I want to thank again our, our hosts, Rabbi and pastor as the son of a pastor it is really refreshing to see this place of worship use for a diversity of things.
(57:23):
I'm Jordan Wood. I'm the executive director of democracy first.
I also wanted to put a plug in for another one of Jonathan's book is excellent biography on Jimmy Carter, and I bring that up because democracy first, we started in 2021.
And Jimmy Carter was in many ways an inspiration for that because after he left the White House he through the Carter Center started a program to help new democracies around the world learn how to be a healthy democracy.
(57:57):
And when they were working with new political parties and candidates, they said there are certain principles, no matter what your political ideology is, that all candidates and parties need to embrace.
We haven't had the need for an organization to form an America around those principles.
(58:18):
But that's what we've done with democracy first and in those principles are a right to vote for eligible citizens denouncing political violence against election workers and your political opponents, not spreading misinformation about our elections, and accepting
the outcome when the votes have been counted certifying that result and supporting the peaceful transfer of power.
(58:42):
Those are the only four things we care about in an in unfortunately we have many politicians in the country today that that don't believe they need to publicly commit to those things so I want to close by saying there's another thing you can do, which our team here,
part of our campaign is called the democracy first promise which is getting voters to commit that they'll hold politicians accountable who subvert these principles, and that they'll call in candidates asking for their vote to affirm these principles so
(59:15):
before you leave please see Hannah here in the red, easy to spot, and we'd really appreciate it and thank you all for coming tonight. I also want to thank our team Hannah and Julie and others who make events like this possible.
You're listening to the United to Preserve Democracy and the Rule of Law Speaker Series,
(00:04):
presented by Democracy First.
Join us for a special conversation with Jonathan Alter, bestselling author and presidential biographer.
This conversation was recorded in Winwood, Pennsylvania in September 2024
and was moderated by Montgomery County Commissioner, Neil McKeige.
Jonathan, why don't we just start with his historical perspective and...
(00:30):
Okay, when President Biden came to Montgomery County in the beginning of this year,
very different moment for us politically, but maybe not.
His speech was about democracy and it was near Valley Forge.
And what are your thoughts? What does it mean to have democracy on the line right now?
(00:53):
Well, first, thank you so much for having me.
And I'm so thrilled that this is an interfaith event.
And thanks to everybody for coming and listening.
So, I've covered 10 presidential elections.
I started when I was quite young and I was working for almost 30 years for Newsweek.
(01:21):
And every time the politicians would say,
this is the most important election in our lifetime.
And at a certain point, I'm going to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I wrote a biography, as you mentioned, of Jimmy Carter, 1976,
Jimmy Carter against Gerald Ford, even 1980, Jimmy Carter against Ronald Reagan.
(01:46):
You might have felt very strongly about one or the other candidate,
but democracy wasn't on the line.
It wasn't the most important election of everybody's lifetime.
But by the time we got to 2016, 2020, and especially 2024,
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the cliche that I had heard all those years is actually true.
This is the most pivotal election of any of our lifetimes,
because it's the only one where our system of government is on the line.
And the reason that it's on the line is because if you look at the essence of democracy,
(02:33):
the essence of what was established by George Washington,
you keep coming back to this question of the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power.
And so when George Washington decided not to run for a third term in 1800,
(03:00):
King George III, who was still on the throne, said,
if George Washington steps away from power, he will be the greatest man in the world.
And he was.
And when you think about that precedent, that through so much of human history,
(03:20):
either power changed because you were killed or you died.
And we had a period in the Roman Republic, and my next book is about Caesar and how they lost
their republic when there was the peaceful transfer of power.
But then 2000 years, almost 2000 years, where it was really the exception.
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And so this is on the line, because when Donald Trump would not acknowledge that he lost the election,
and to this day won't acknowledge it and has convinced 40 percent of the American public
that the election was stolen from him, even though 60 judges said it was not,
(04:08):
that's what has precipitated this.
And then when you add to that, that he has embraced this idea that the
article two of the Constitution gives him the power to do, as he told some school kids who came to the
White House when he was president, quote, anything I want to do,
(04:31):
then you realize a little better what the stakes are.
Because in our system, you don't get to do anything you want to do because you're president.
And so there are many other issues that relate to this, but I do think that
secure elections, the rule of law, peaceful transfer of power,
(04:56):
are at the core of this just historic decision that the voters are going to make.
So one of the things that I've seen, wow, that's so much better,
one of the things that I've seen as an election administrator is every meeting we have in our
board of elections is people will come in with misinformation.
(05:18):
They'll think that there's widespread fraud.
They'll think that non-citizens are voting.
And that in the past has led to violence here in Montgomery County.
So we actually had someone who fired gunshots into a campaign office slash it was a
someone who fired gunshots into a campaign office slash inauguration January 20th,
(05:40):
saying that the election was stolen.
And while luckily no one was there, it showed me that the misinformation
directly leads to violence.
I mean, the whole of January 6th was really a response to this idea that there was widespread fraud.
And I mean, what can you say about that context?
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Because when we think about democracy, we think about people coming to their judgments.
We think about a public square where ideas are freely shared, but there's misinformation
and it's widely understood.
And how do you actually address that in this?
Well, this is a huge problem that is not going to be solved anytime soon.
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And we're going to have to figure out a way to return to the sovereignty of fact.
And we've traveled a distance from it in part because of technology
and people kind of reading what affirms what they already believe, kind of the journalism of
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self affirmation.
And I think this occurs on the left and the right.
And then a sense that other values are more important in journalism than truth.
Like if it confirms what I already believe, that's more important than whether somebody
(07:25):
has figured out whether it's true or not.
So we're not going to solve that problem anytime soon.
But the more immediate problem is that when you have leaders who don't respect fact,
it worsens what is already a bad problem.
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So, you know, when one of the candidates for vice president says that the Haitians are
illegal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, when it's just not true, not to mention that they're
not eating pets.
The problem is a lot of people believe it when it comes from the top.
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And this is where like some historians are more into, you know, the collision of historic forces.
And I'm much more a believer in the great man and great woman theory of history, that leadership
really counts because when leaders give the people a permission slip to hate, a permission slip to
(08:38):
make stuff up, a permission slip to attack democratic institutions, then you get this downward spiral.
And I think that's where we are now and we'll see whether we can start to come out of it later this year.
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So what kind of leadership, I mean, you mentioned George Washington, can you give me some other examples of leadership that would preserve the ideals of democracy and then eventually what do you think is needed right now?
So I mean, I like to look to Lincoln and my book ends with Lincoln because I was covering the Trump trial.
(09:21):
I was the felony trial.
I was in the courtroom all 23 days just sitting 25 feet away from men, I consider to be the most dangerous threat to democracy in our entire history.
And one day after court, I walked down to just a few blocks away in lower Manhattan to a place that originally been the five points.
(09:50):
You might remember there have been some movies about what the five points were like in the 19th century.
Scorsese directed and a gang of New York is about that basically.
And the reason I went down to the five points is that Abraham Lincoln in 1860, when he came to New York and he delivered an address at the Cooper Union that put him on the map.
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And he also went down to the five points and he listened to some children, some very poor children that he met there and he inspired them.
And at Cooper Union, Lincoln said, among other things, that might does not make right.
(10:44):
Right makes might.
And basically the difference between somebody who believes in democratic values and somebody like Donald Trump believes in authoritarian values and looks to Victor Orban and Hungary and other authoritarians around the world for his inspiration for the way he views politics.
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The difference between those two worldviews is one of them is that right makes might and the other is that might makes right.
And that was really what was at issue in World War two to when you're talking about aggression and resisting aggression.
That I'm reputant obviously believes that might makes right.
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So I think there are ways of using various historical circumstances to position oneself. So then shortly before his death when he gave us famous second inaugural 600,000 Americans had died and Abraham Lincoln is being very hopeful.
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He's talking about the mystic chords of memory that will bring us back together and the better angels of our nature.
And so one need not despair because the fight for democracy is is an ongoing project. It's not a single battle.
(12:16):
So, you know, if like some people say well you know if Trump wins democracy is dead I don't believe that I believe it will suffer a very serious blow, but that there are lots of opportunities to build democratic values,
even in in darkness and certainly there are many examples around the world of people working to transform authoritarian societies to democratic ones.
(12:49):
You know when when Jimmy Carter was president.
Venezuela was the only democracy in Latin America in South America and now Venezuela is the only country that's not a democracy in in South America they have a left wing authoritarian leader.
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So, you know that there's there's there's plenty of potential for progress and you can get nothing is permanent in American politics you can always revive eternal ideas like democratic values.
So, can we talk a little bit you've written quite a bit about voting rights history and we spoke earlier about some of the legislation and reforms that are being proposed.
(13:42):
When I think about what's undemocratic in the United States, at least the things that we all pay attention to.
It's the fact that if you're from Wyoming you have two senators and if you're from California you have two senators and you've got 70 times as many people I think in one state for the other it's that you're, if you're in Washington DC you have no representation in the federal government.
(14:08):
We have the Electoral College, which is great for us in Pennsylvania because it means everyone is going to come here to campaign if that's what you're interested in or maybe it's not great for us.
But we have this, you call it an artifact but of the original negotiation over the Constitution and the fact that the smaller states wanted to say in the Senate and, and that has, in many ways, put us in a position that is undemocratic where we now have a majority on the Supreme Court that was appointed by presidents who did not win the popular vote,
(14:46):
confirmed by Senates that don't represent a majority of the country and are now making rulings that are at odds with, with a majority of the country.
And obviously Dobbs is one of those, there are others that we can talk about.
But much of the focus that I had actually before I became a commissioner as an advocate was to pass HR one. Can you tell us a little bit about the current moment, the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and, and what's, you know, what's important about those.
(15:22):
Well, first of all, everything you say about some of the structural problems of the Constitution is true. It's very frustrating, but we're actually a much more small d democratic nation than we've been in our entire history.
And so it's important not to get despondent about these things. The reason I say that is that we, I would argue, and a number of other historians agree, we didn't actually have anything.
(15:51):
That could fairly be called a democracy until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. You know, in, in the state of Mississippi, there was a period when you could count on one hand the number of black voters in the state.
You know, and so when and women were disenfranchised until 1919. And so the story of American history is really the story of the expansion.
(16:28):
Yeah, so, so I shouldn't, I shouldn't say that the present is the most democratic, but maybe 20 years ago was about the most democratic that we've ever been. There have been some reversals, and I just want to mention two and they're both Supreme Court decisions.
By the way, the Supreme Court in a democracy is under no obligation to follow, you know, what the polls say people favor. I mean, I think the dobs decision is terrible, but they shouldn't have gone the other way just because polls show that people support abortion.
(17:03):
It's not the way judges are supposed to rule. But there were two decisions, the Shelby decision, which invalidated the Voting Rights Act, and then the most recent decision on immunate presidential immunity that were terribly undemocratic,
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basically, the widespread setbacks in voting rights and an expansion of voter suppression and what HR one would do is basically restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a number of other things to enhance democratic participation
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like gerrymandering and I don't want to go through all the particulars of the bill, but it's a very important piece of legislation and something very significant happened at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, which is that Chuck Schumer said that if the Democrats are able to
(18:11):
have the same control of the Senate, which is a big if, and most hundreds would say it's not likely, but it is possible.
And they get control of the House and the White House, that he would on the first day that would be January 21 after the after Kamala Harris was sworn in, they would ask HR one, and they would suspend the filibuster.
(18:38):
So they'd only need to do it with 50 votes and then the tie would be broken by in this scenario, Vice President Tim walls.
So that's the reason that HR one is important is this question in this election is not between a, or just between a setback for democracy and the status quo.
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It's between a setback for democracy and a huge important advance for democracy that is possible under this John Lewis Voting Rights Act legislation and the Democratic Party is very united on this and I wanted to say just to keep it a little bit bipartisan
(19:27):
The politician I got the closest to too close to in my life in my career was John McCain as I explained in this book and and so this isn't really about how partisanship.
And I think all you have to do is listen to somebody like Liz Cheney, by the way, would not be for HR one but you know is very eloquent on the stakes in this election to realize that this isn't about like whether you want taxes to go up or down or what your
(19:57):
feeling is on this policy or that policy. It's about core issues that go to who we are as a country, we are as a people, and what we will do to defend what we hold dear.
And this is where in my own mind I've been kind of thrust back to the story of my father which I just want to tell with your indulgence.
(20:28):
Yeah, briefly. So, in 1941, my father was a Jewish kid from Chicago who went to Purdue University.
(20:49):
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he, you know, was very happy in college he had what they used to call a swell convertible and he had a girlfriend or wasn't my mother yet but
he was very happy, but democracy was calling him. And he went enlisted and he flew 31 combat missions in a B-24 he was shot down, originally got back to his base because they were Soviet troops in Hungary who came out with his hands up they were happy to see Russians.
(21:28):
And George H.W. Bush had a similar experience in the Pacific. He was the youngest pilot in the Navy and he was inspired by his graduation speaker at Andover who was the secretary of war, Henry Stimpson.
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And he went off on his 18th birthday enlisted and then he shot down and when he's in his life raft and all this was something I was covering in 1988 when Bush was elected president.
(22:10):
When he's in his life raft. He was asked by reporters like me, What were you thinking about. And he said, I was thinking about Barbara, his fiance, and I was thinking about, you know, I'm going to somebody going to rescue me eventually a submarine rescued him.
And he said, I was thinking about the separation of church and state and people like me we laughed we snickered. Oh, Bush he's just trying to show that he hasn't sold out to the religious right, you know, and this is just a political thing.
(22:44):
And I'm actually, all these years later really embarrassed that I snickered at George Bush, because he answered the call to defend democracy.
And I believe he actually was thinking about the Constitution, maybe not the separation of church and state, but he was thinking about the fundamental values that had motivated him to enlist and to fight.
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And the lesson for me is, we don't get to choose when it's convenient to go and fight for democracy. We do it when we must. And this is a time when we must.
And unlike my father and George Bush, none of us has to risk our lives to do it. We just have to work harder when it counts.
(23:47):
All right, should we open it up to questions.
What are you supposed to do to change people's minds, because early and more, they don't want to discuss the issue.
Maybe the bed early to rise, get to work and organize. There's a lot of ways to be involved in the political process.
(24:08):
And, and I mean, I don't want to get into the mechanics of campaigns but one of the things that technology has changed so like some people don't like knocking on doors.
You can call voters all over Pennsylvania, you know, and the computer like goes right through the, they dial the numbers and then they can talk to 2530 voters a night.
(24:34):
And some of them are not going to want to talk to you but they're going to be plenty of others who are, are happy to, you know, chat a little bit.
So it really, and one of the things that's great about democracy building and whether in the United States or in other countries where I've witnessed it is that democracy building is community.
(24:55):
And so even if you don't win a particular election, even if some people slam the door in your face or hang up the phone.
You are engaged in a noble act of trying to connect, get out of your phone off your phone away from the TV and actually talk to other Americans.
(25:19):
And some people go, I don't really want to want to talk to, you know, people who are on the other side or whatever.
Those aren't the names that they're giving you to call into contact, you know, and they're giving you names of often they're independent voters.
And so it's a different people have different ways of making contributions.
(25:45):
So I, when I was trying to, you know, I as journalists like I can't, you know, give money or anything like that, but I was trying to figure out what can I do and this is why I ended up
going to the Trump trial and and getting credentialed, which was very hard to do to get into the courtroom.
And it actually, I realized what I was doing in reflecting on a story about when I interviewed Richard Nixon in 1988 I talked earlier about the 1988 campaign.
(26:18):
And I really wanted to meet Nixon before he grope. I've interviewed nine presidents, either before during or after they left office in Nixon's case it was long after he left office.
And I got him into Newsweek. And I said, How will history regard Ronald Reagan and Nixon said, Well, it depends if you're talking about history, the historians, because the historians are like you, they're liberal liberal,
(26:53):
you're going to history or journalism or conservative, you're going to business. And, you know, this was a pretty perceptive answer and it's like, I call one of my sections like Nixon had my number like I felt seen by Richard Nixon.
And I realized like, what's my contribution to democracy, bearing witness. That's all that I can do. You can only, you know, I can't go into B24 like my father, I can bear witness somebody else, maybe they can dig a little deeper, you know, and support organizations that are promoting democracy.
(27:34):
And people they want to get involved in campaigns, if not the presidential campaign, then local campaigns on either side, you know, so there's lots of ways to be involved.
Sorry to be so long winded about that.
So as the politician up here, I'll tell you some thoughts on on what it means to take action and to organize if you care about this. And I sort of have this unusual place where I grew up in Carbon County in rural Pennsylvania where really Trump won all of his votes.
(28:06):
And I remember people flip from Obama to Trump in 2016. And then I also now I'm raising my kids and my wife originally grew up in Montgomery County where it has gone in the other direction. And I probably knocked about 20,000 doors accounted for myself and others.
And one of the key things that I've learned is that it's, it's essentially, I mean, quite literally a numbers game, right?
(28:33):
And that's about 50% plus one. And I've been to places where the people wanted to, you know, say, get off the get off my lawn, and then I've been to other places where we had really thoughtful conversations about policy and what we could do if we got the right people in office.
And you never know which conversation you're going to have before you have it. But the key is to recognize that for us to make change and to see things happen differently or things not to happen to us but for us to determine what happens.
(29:11):
It takes getting out of our echo chambers and not just talking to people we talk to every day but reaching beyond that and putting in the time and a lot of people are doing that for many different causes and issues.
Maybe it's a specific thing that you care about. Maybe if it's a candidate you care about.
And maybe it's the basic idea that people should vote and have their voice heard. So quick example, you know, I deal with a lot of conspiracy theories around the election.
(29:42):
And someone said, if you think the election is so secure in Pennsylvania, Montgomery County, you should be willing to do an audit after the fact.
And I said, you know, we actually do two audits after every election. And I thought they'd come back saying, you know, this is why that's not a real audit or it doesn't count.
They'd say, oh, I didn't know that. Thank you for telling me. How reassuring. That was the response. So you never know. There are persuadable people out there.
(30:11):
You just need to give them a chance and be willing to have the conversation.
Can I just say something about Montgomery County? I was I was laying it on the commissioner beforehand. So, you know, I talk in a lot of different places and when you're not in a battleground state, you know, you're asking people to get involved in another state.
It's a much harder sell. I mean, you are at round zero, not just of what's going on in Pennsylvania, but of determining this whole election, which will then determine a lot about the struggle between authoritarian and democratic regimes around the world,
(30:53):
because America is a very powerful nation in terms of its example for the world. And so when democracy does well in the United States, it often does well in other places. One authoritarian ideas do well in the United States.
That's going to give aid and comfort to other authoritarians. I mean, I always like to say that Donald Trump has had harsh words for everybody in his party, the other party show business harsh word for every single prominent person you can think of over tens of thousands of tweets.
(31:31):
One exception, he's never said anything critical about Vladimir Putin. And so, you know, the company that you keep is really important to how these larger ideas survive or or are harmed.
(31:52):
And basically, if if Kamala Harris can't match or very likely need to exceed the margins that she got in Montgomery Montgomery County, the third biggest county in your state, she will lose and she will lose the presidency and everything that comes with that.
(32:20):
So I don't mean to lay it on everybody. But if you don't stop wringing your hands and start ringing doorbells, it's all going south.
If she underperforms in Montgomery County, she will not be the next president.
Full stop.
(32:50):
You know, it's kind of hard to get out there and get started and everything, but you know, we do it and while we're out there and we're talking to people, you feel kind of good about it and everything. And then when you're finished, you feel proud.
(33:11):
You know, you know, you know, you do get this good feeling when you get out there and you don't convince everybody, but you get to talk to people and just connecting with everyone, whether the Republicans or not.
(33:37):
They appreciate that you're out there making an effort.
Building community.
Yeah, very good.
Yeah, that's huge.
That's really that's it. Thank you for sharing. Thank you.
So, democracy is about the peaceful transfer of power. So after November the fifth, we could have a scenario where we're at 269 each, or it's too close to call in some important states.
(34:15):
So what should be getting done now as we think about the rule of law and how that plays out over the next several months through to January and misinformation, violence, various because it could be unprecedented.
So what's being done to prepare for it.
Buckle up. It's probably going to be a bumpy ride.
(34:39):
But it 269 269 because of something that just happened in Nebraska.
If if Kamala Harris carries Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan with the help of Omaha and Nebraska where they have this weird system.
(35:04):
And they're going to be protected now it's going to be a while before we know that because Pennsylvania law doesn't require the counting of mail in ballots until after election day.
So that means that there's no chance that we'll know the results of Pennsylvania on election night.
(35:26):
And it's going to be at a minimum a couple of days, quite possibly longer with all the legal challenges.
And, and you know the last time it ended up.
Okay, because even Trump appointed judges would not countenance these objections, because there was no evidence for them.
(35:52):
But we can't rule out that, you know, it could go differently this time they could get a different judge in some of these cases, and you have some MAGA commissioners and certain Republican counties who are all set for all kinds of legal challenges.
And it's it's a real unknown and that's why a close election is very concerning.
(36:20):
But, but there's no point in kind of going into a sense of dread beforehand because there's work to do and that the people I've talked to are more confident than I expected about what will happen on election day.
(36:41):
Yes, there's a threat that there could be violence like there was in a precinct here in Montgomery County in 2020.
But overall, that election was really without usual irregularities that Trump's a home at Department of Homeland Security election guy said it was like the fairest election in American history, the Trump guy said this.
(37:08):
So and the 2022 election went off largely without incident so it might be and there is a lot of lawyers who volunteered in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to be there to make it clear that if somebody is trying to have a whole workers trying to prevent somebody from voting who should be allowed to vote that they will recognize that there are consequences for that.
(37:35):
So the concern right now I think is more about what happens after November 5th, then what's going to happen on election day itself.
Yeah.
One thing I would just add is the scenario you're thinking about is one there's also just the scenario where Pennsylvania decides the election right and, and it's very close and we're already seeing so in Montgomery County, anyone apply for mail in ballot.
(38:03):
Raise your hands.
You will hopefully get that tomorrow.
Just so you know, and as soon as we made our ballots accessible.
We were the first county in the Commonwealth.
We got sued by the RNC.
And we got sued by the RNC.
And, and the Department of State has called it a frivolous lawsuit, but their argument was that we should do testing on all of the precinct machines that are going to be used before we send out any ballots.
(38:33):
Which would have delayed our sending out the ballots by another few weeks, two weeks.
And we wanted to get them out now because one, we're legally entitled to do that to there are still cases that have been pushed to throw out ballots that have misdated dates on the outside envelope or if you forget your signature.
(38:56):
Currently, those votes will not be counted. There was a moment where the third circuit decided that they should be counted because we know when you get your ballot, we know when you when we sent it to you and the data is immaterial.
But right now that case was vacated by the US Supreme Court.
And so those ballots will be thrown out.
(39:17):
So when you return it, please remember to sign a data.
But I say this because the litigation has already begun right as soon as the voting has begun.
I think there's some before that as well.
And we expect a number of other cases.
But what worries me the most is that this has an impact where people then feel distrust in the process and where people think maybe I shouldn't vote by mail.
(39:43):
Maybe I should wait for election day.
Well, you might not be able to make it on election day or, you know, if you if you vote now, you can make sure you you get it counted.
And that that could have an effect on turnout one just that creating distrust in the election.
So our job I think is to show that it's secure that one we're going to win this and that we have a number of options that people can cast their vote starting now.
(40:11):
Yeah, I mean, I think overall this the idea of mail in ballots favors Democrats because Trump over the objection of his advisors continues to dis mail in ballots.
And it's just kind of stupid of him politically to do that because it's always better to bank votes early if you can.
(40:36):
And he's very dependent on the weather if he has an election day strategy and there's a driving rain and Pennsylvania that's very bad for the Republicans.
So, you know, yes, there are these legal impediments.
But but I think that this is still advantageous for Democrats.
(41:00):
I have a question here, we have over 100 prominent Republicans that have crossed the divide to support Harris.
Can you remember anything like that in your lifetime? And what does that mean for traditional party politics?
I actually do remember it was before I started covering politics, but in 1972, when Nixon won a 49 state landslide, there was a bumper sticker of the day.
(41:34):
It said, don't blame me. I'm from Massachusetts.
That was the only state that went for George McGovern.
And there was a pretty big collection of what we're called Democrats for Nixon that year.
So there is some history of this.
But I think what I've never seen before, and, you know, I have to say, I do know too much about the history of American elections, like my family is like, give it a rest, you know, the election of 1888.
(42:09):
The the number of people who worked directly for Donald Trump and are now against him strongly against him.
We've never seen anything like that, not even close.
And there's dozens of them who just feel that based on their personal experience.
(42:34):
These are very conservative Republicans that he simply unfit for the presidency.
So, but yeah, I think the only sometimes people ask me like, what's the most comparable election.
And I say 1864 at the Civil War wasn't quite over. And Lincoln was running for a second term and his opponent was General George McClellan, it would been his famous his first general and dashing figure and basically wouldn't fight.
(43:15):
So Lincoln had to replace him.
And McClellan claimed that he didn't want a negotiated settlement with the South, but if he'd been elected, he probably would have and we would now have Confederacy.
But at a minimum, he was against abolition.
(43:36):
So if that election had gone the other way and in September of 1864, it looked like Lincoln was going to lose a couple months later. And then with some key victories on the battlefield, he, you know, he regained his political strength.
But I mean, I think, you know, I'd say the stakes are not this time are not quite as high as that. In the same way that what we've been going through is not as bad as the 1850s and what they went through in the run up to the Civil War.
(44:06):
And, you know, we will, if he's elected, survive Trump, democracy will survive Trump in some form, even if it's dinged up.
I really have a problem with people who say, oh, I'm going to leave leave the country. He's elected.
(44:27):
There's too much to do to stay and fight and protect democracy, protect people who are going to be literally put into camps.
You can't deport 8 million people without, which by the way, you can do a lot of unilaterally without Congress.
Without, you know, putting them into camps and some of the more honest Trumpsters have said, yes, there will be camps.
(44:52):
So, you know, I think a lot of Americans will have to decide, will I try to protect these dreamers and others who they want to send back to a country they never lived in.
And a lot of work for people to do if this election goes for Trump. That's why I strongly object to this idea of, you know, leaving a lot more family separation.
(45:21):
We're almost, but in closing, wanted to just put to both of you what gives you hope about the future of American democracy, both in your role over seeing elections here.
But, but Jonathan as a historian, what are you optimistic about?
Well, I describe myself as hopeful rather than optimistic and I am very hopeful and I end my book on a hopeful theme.
(45:47):
So, so far the judiciary has held, you know, we do have the Eileen cannons of the world who are potentially a problem and there could be more of them, depending on how the election goes.
But I think, you know, despite the Supreme Court decisions that have been problematic, it's, it's important to remember that last time around all 60 cases were dismissed and our judges still require evidence.
(46:28):
And that's so that's that's a real source of hope. I was very much inspired by the judge and the jury and the Trump felony trial. I was, you know, almost emotional in seeing how responsible and dutiful these jurors were and how seriously they take their responsibilities.
(46:49):
But I also think that in any society, it doesn't matter where it is, it doesn't matter, even in China, if you look at Tiananmen Square, you know, there is this thirst for freedom.
The flame cannot be extinguished. And at the end, the authoritarians lose. They eventually lose not not in certain societies of like long term where they've had authoritarian governments like in China and Russia for, you know, for hundreds and hundreds of years,
(47:24):
but in societies that have tasted freedom, real freedom, that taste never goes away. And so there's always a reservoir of love for our ideas and our precious democratic values that will power resistance.
(47:51):
It will change elections eventually, and it it will.
It will survive the cult of personality that we are now experiencing.
Yeah, you know, I think it's appropriate that you said cult of personality because many of the ideas that Trump has tested and brought to a level that we've never really seen before and all the norms that he shattered.
(48:25):
It doesn't really apply or translate to anyone else right now. I mean, we can talk about that and have a whole conversation, but JD Vance isn't really pulling it pulling it off.
And and so for whatever reason, you know, you have this person who shaped his identity while being on television and a showman for many, many years and was able to translate that into this, but very few others are.
(48:50):
And what really gives me hope, though, for this year and this election is that people genuinely understand the stakes and use the word freedom, which I think is helpful in the sense that when we talk about what is important about democracy,
it's not just the idea, the form of government, something you would talk about in a civics class. It starts with the ideal that we all have a voice through our vote, and an equal say in determining our own future.
(49:23):
And that is essential to the idea of freedom and most most viscerally recognized when you think of issues like reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.
(49:44):
And when you have the first first woman of color on a national ticket and you have someone who is able to speak to a majority of the country that has not been seen in the halls of power.
(50:05):
I think that's powerful. And I think there are a lot of young people. I think there are a lot of people who maybe when Barack Obama was first elected, we saw a historic turnout.
I think I think we could see something like that again, and a different coalition. People used to talk about what his coalition and his majority was like, remember, he won Indiana.
(50:29):
So there was no disputing what happened on election day because of how overwhelming it was in terms of the Electoral College.
And while people always ask me, how are you feeling about Pennsylvania? What's going on? Is it going to be, you know, this divided?
I actually don't read polls and I don't look at them at all. And part of that is because when I look at every year since Dobbs, whether it was Supreme Court race in this day, whether it was the US Senate race,
(51:01):
people turned out who would not have turned out before and it really changed the electorate in a way that was unexpected. And I think that's when things are going in the right direction is when you're seeing a broad majority that is enduring.
And that could be, you know, 2024 could be another step in that.
(51:25):
So I hope so. And I'm just going to make a quick, give a little plug here.
So there's cards from my book that you'll see on the way out where you can order it. And if you go to my website, you can get my email.
If you send me your address, I'll send you a book plate if you're interested in it.
(51:50):
But the reason that I'm sort of thinking about my book is that you just made a point that reminded me that even though I'm actually more scared than you are about what's going to happen here for a lot of reasons that we could talk about.
And I spent the day interviewing voters and came away today a little bit discouraged.
(52:17):
He asked me what was hopeful. I have other stuff.
But the reason that I'm hopeful is that in one part of the book, I write about how if you look at the history of residential elections, the candidate who owns the future almost always wins.
(52:39):
These campaigns are ultimately about the future. They're not about the past, even when Trump said make America great again.
He was talking about doing something in the future that took us back to the past.
But that make was an argument for his idea of what the future should be.
And I think that Kamala Harris is well on her way to not just because of her very upbeat temperament, which is also a big asset in politics and her almost flawless campaign to date.
(53:18):
She's well on her way to owning the future and playing to people's hopes rather than their fears. This is a hope versus fear campaign.
And what Trump does, and I think it's on top of everything else, really objectionable, is he trashes the United States.
(53:44):
Remember what outgoing president or former president Bush said after Trump's American carnage inaugural address on January 20 2017.
He said that was some weird s we just heard because Trump was trashing our country.
(54:07):
So basically, and he's continued to trash our country and and and appeal to people's fears and it works up to a point.
But ultimately, if you can get somebody who can channel our hopes and make the case for a better tomorrow and appeal to, as I said, what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.
(54:30):
You have not just a moral advantage, but ultimately a political advantage as well.
Well, the great way to one more.
Can we have one more of this woman in the blue as editor.
Okay, and up for a long time.
But one more, one more question.
I was very long winded and didn't give you a didn't give you a chance to ask a question.
(54:51):
So along the lines of hope and and the election, how important do you think is the the young vote like our young adult children.
How much could that turn in the election, this election.
So I think if young people voted voted if young people voted at the same rate of 65 plus voters, it would change the entire electorate.
(55:20):
One of the things that we're doing in the county is making sure that every college student knows that they can register here, or everyone who's away knows that they can still stay registered in Pennsylvania.
And trying to find the ways to communicate directly with young people is really important in in government and so much of what we do.
(55:43):
We rarely keep up with the times in terms of how to communicate and.
So that's that's a key I'm kind of giving a shout out to my Gen Z comm staff or Helen, who graduated from Bryn Mar just in May, or currently is grad yes.
She actually graduated a year early and is about to graduate.
Correct.
(56:04):
But it's it would change everything.
So if there's young people that you need to call right now and tell them to apply for their mail in ballot, please do.
A lot are inspired by Harris and the problem I think with younger voters is that a lot of them have known nothing but Trump and they don't really know it doesn't have to be this way.
(56:26):
You know, and so it's like an abstraction for them that they could have something better because, you know, they were they were, you know, 12 years old or something when Obama was president.
So I, I think that's kind of on older people to get them to understand even though they're hard to convince on democracy ideas because for a variety of reasons.
(56:54):
There are other issues beyond Taylor Swift, where you can have a conversation with them.
Great, great. Well, join me in thanking Commissioner.
Thank you everyone.
I want to thank again our, our hosts, Rabbi and pastor as the son of a pastor it is really refreshing to see this place of worship use for a diversity of things.
(57:23):
I'm Jordan Wood. I'm the executive director of democracy first.
I also wanted to put a plug in for another one of Jonathan's book is excellent biography on Jimmy Carter, and I bring that up because democracy first, we started in 2021.
And Jimmy Carter was in many ways an inspiration for that because after he left the White House he through the Carter Center started a program to help new democracies around the world learn how to be a healthy democracy.
(57:57):
And when they were working with new political parties and candidates, they said there are certain principles, no matter what your political ideology is, that all candidates and parties need to embrace.
We haven't had the need for an organization to form an America around those principles.
(58:18):
But that's what we've done with democracy first and in those principles are a right to vote for eligible citizens denouncing political violence against election workers and your political opponents, not spreading misinformation about our elections, and accepting
the outcome when the votes have been counted certifying that result and supporting the peaceful transfer of power.
(58:42):
Those are the only four things we care about in an in unfortunately we have many politicians in the country today that that don't believe they need to publicly commit to those things so I want to close by saying there's another thing you can do, which our team here,
part of our campaign is called the democracy first promise which is getting voters to commit that they'll hold politicians accountable who subvert these principles, and that they'll call in candidates asking for their vote to affirm these principles so
(59:15):
before you leave please see Hannah here in the red, easy to spot, and we'd really appreciate it and thank you all for coming tonight. I also want to thank our team Hannah and Julie and others who make events like this possible.
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