 Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here with Community Matters. I'm Jay Fidel here on a Thursday with Colin Moore, Professor Colin Moore, who is a professor of political science at UH Manoa. Thank you for joining us, Colin. It's great to have you on the show. My pleasure to be here, Jay. We're going to talk about, you know, what seems to be obvious. That is how the coronavirus is affecting government, political science, if you will. And thus, our state, our country, our lives. So you must be watching this with great interest because what existed before no longer exists, and we are in this huge political transformation now. It goes way beyond what Donald Trump was doing before, and it affects the very underpinnings of our lives together in this country. So can we talk about one government at a time? Can we talk about, for example, state government? How is the coronavirus crisis affected state government here in Hawaii? I mean, I think the most obvious thing is the legislature is shut down right now. I mean, so the legislative session is suspended, which makes it difficult to respond with legislation to some of these problems. So that's one issue. I mean, the second, of course, is that it's already beginning to strain the state's resources and we're not even the most effective state. I mean, I think Hawaii actually is so far in a pretty good position with fewer than 300 COVID-19 cases. But we also don't have a lot of capacity here. We actually have less hospital capacity than a lot of states, so it could become very serious. You can already see it straining the relationship of some politicians, most famously Lieutenant Governor Josh Green and Governor David Ige, who I guess have made up now, but for a long time really were publicly fighting about the response to the point, which at least the media accused the governor of banning the lieutenant governor from some of these briefings. But all in all, I think that the state of Hawaii has responded reasonably well. Governor Ige eventually put into place the quarantine. They've more or less stopped tourism and even inner island flights now. So it's going to continue to strain the state's resources. But I sort of give the state of Hawaii's response about a B plus to this. Can we unpack that a little bit? You get the substantive response and then you get the communications response to the public. Does the B plus apply to both or is there a difference between the substantive response and the communications response? That's a good point. I'd actually give a higher grade to the substantive response than the communication response in some ways. I mean, we were an early state, particularly given the number of cases we had to recommend self quarantining, social distancing, all of these practices. I mean, we predated a lot of states on the mainland, you know, most notoriously Florida that had a bigger problem that also had a tourism economy. So I'll give I'll give the state credit for that. You know, the legislature shut down pretty early. The university shut down relatively early. And I hope like we've seen on the West Coast states, California, in particular, that that's really going to help us because right now you see California with relatively few cases. The communication probably could have been a bit better. I mean, Governor E. Gay is not Andrew Cuomo or Gavin Newsom, who seemed to have really, you know, with their daily press conferences shown that they're in charge. I mean, there's been an attempt to replicate that by Governor E. Gay, but I don't think it's been quite so so effective. But I don't think it's been terrible either. Actually, I think Hawaii, like I said, has done a reasonably good job because there's a lot that they can't do. The state has limited resources that is limited funding. It has it doesn't have the ability to access these federal stockpiles. So, so overall, I mean, and we were talking about this before this show started even the states have really been the stars of this response and the federal government has really been falling down on the job. Yeah, so now we have, you know, I suppose it's worth talking about how this happened. We have the legislature stopping mid mid course, taking a recess which presumably will go on for a long time maybe until next next session next year. Where it's unable to do anything. And there are committees in both the House and the Senate that are talking about the coronavirus. And I don't know what that means. Legislatures, yes, they talk but they also adopt statutes. And they're not able to adopt any statutes. They're in talking mode. I don't know if they're talking to the governor. I don't know if they're overseeing departments. And I wonder if there's any function whatsoever in these detached committees that are now talking after the recess began. This is this is a really a big test of state government when you when you close down the legislature that's a problem isn't it. It's a it's a huge problem. I mean, an unprecedented one, you know, outside of occasional wartime decisions which which are exceedingly rare. So I mean, I think that they've made a good faith effort to try to at least use their function as elected officials to coordinate responses from agencies to coordinate with the governor. But they really do need to be back in session. And some states are actually experimenting with running the legislature remotely. Now there's, you know, there's a lot of objections to that about security and other things. But I really think it's something they need to seriously consider because this will likely drag on for quite some time. Certainly many members of the legislature are very sort of people who can be the most vulnerable to this virus. They're older. I don't really see any reason why we can't really begin to investigate remote operations. This is already happening in Pennsylvania, you know, and we have the advantage of being a united democratic state. So there's not going to be as many party line votes that might make this difficult. So I think it's time for them to seriously consider this. Because I think that is a much better alternative whatever risk there is to security and I think there are easy workarounds for that. You know, I think the much greater risk is we just don't have elected officials able to do their job and pass legislation. And that could go on for quite some time. Yeah, but to fix it is going to be a Herculean mission because, you know, the provision calling for in person votes on the floor of the House and the Senate is in the Constitution. So fix the Constitution first and see that's a that's a big problem. In terms of workarounds, I mean, I said there are logical things that come to mind. For example, they can have straw votes that are later affirmed when they get together. But getting together isn't so easy because even flying from the neighbor islands you you have a 14 day quarantine period. And you know, and that that applies to legislators as well. I suppose I suppose David who created the 14 day quarantine period could accept exempt the legislators. They could come in and have a short a short meeting a short session if you will, simply to affirm a bunch of bills that they had straw votes on and get about their business and maybe there's other ways to but it strikes me. There are some even more creative ways. I think it I'm not sure which state it was, but they started meeting in a huge basketball stadium so they could maintain the six feet of social distancing, but still operate. So maybe there's something like that which sounds silly, but it might actually be a practical workaround. Yeah. Okay, well, all right, that's that's a problem for the state and hopefully, you know, you said it's going to go on for a long time and I agree with you. So here we're going to be next January and it's not clear that we're going to be back in in normalcy again. In fact, I would I would venture to say we're not going to be back in normalcy again, not on anything and not on state government either. And that leads to the problem of funding of fiscal policy, where you really need money for the state to do its duty to help people sort of the state, the state, you know, social safety debt. But we really can't get the money together. Any thoughts about how that can be handled, especially in a state where the Constitution says you have to balance the budget. Exactly. And we're not the only state like this. I mean, this is really the problem that state governments face. I mean, unlike the federal government, which can create money through the Federal Reserve and doesn't have these sort of limitations. So the only way really to do that is through federal funding. And the act passed by Congress will help with a bit of that. But there may just need to be more direct transfers to state government through some mechanism. They experimented with parts of this during the last financial crisis. But I think that's that's really the only way. I mean, because state government and Hawaii in particular is going to suffer tremendously from this. I mean, the forecast from the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, you know, are projecting maybe 30% unemployment. I mean, tourism is going to be one of the last industries that comes back. So this is going to be an unbelievable financial crisis for Hawaii, unlike anything we've ever seen, I think before. And so I think just keeping basic operations going is going to become a challenge without robust federal support. Now, the benefit, I mean, not the benefit rather, let me rephrase that one. One reason I'm optimistic is that this is going to hit red states as hard as it hits blue states in some ways it might hit the red states even harder. We tend to be more dependent on on federal revenues to begin with and have sicker populations often. And so I expect like you saw with with the most recent bailout package increase in unemployment benefits and all the rest. Relatively bipartisan support because everyone's in this together. And so that actually may end up helping and getting more federal money to help the states. Yeah, you mentioned the new federalism. And I would like to explore that a little bit. You know, we've had this tension actually from the beginning. Am I right from the very beginning, the role of the federal government versus the role of the states. And now we find we were focusing on the federal government for the longest time. A lot of politics went into that. And now we're looking back to the states as the as the viable option in the time of crisis. And the state governors are making deals among themselves. They're cooperating. It's really it's nice to see, except in the long term, it may not work for a country of 330 million people. What do you think about that? Exactly. I mean, like I said before, the governors have really been the stars of the response to this crisis, partly because the federal government has performed so terribly that I think they basically looked around and decided, well, we've got to take care of our own state because the feds aren't going to come in and bail us out. You know, and to some extent, this is the why we have federalism. This is what it was supposed to achieve was that, you know, governors know their states better. They can make decisions more quickly on the ground. So we're actually seeing some of what our founders hoped would happen come to pass here. The trouble is, like I said before, states just have very limited resources because they have these balanced budget requirements because they can't access, you know, they certainly don't have access to the U.S. military, with the exception of the National Guard. And so there's going to come a point where they're not able to function. And they're also probably very unlikely to start really restricting movements across state borders. There's going to be legal questions about that. So we've moved so far in the direction, you know, in the 20th century of strengthening the federal government. It's pretty hard to go back now. I mean, everything is really built into this assumption that the federal government is going to be there for emergencies. I mean, it's for precisely reasons like this, like the pandemic, that we gave the president so much power, that we gave so much power over to the federal government. And federal agencies was because the thought was the states aren't really equipped to handle this themselves. The trouble is the federal government is not really delivering on its promise. Yeah. Something you raised a minute ago, I can't not ask you about. It's about the militia. It's about the fellows with the guns. It's about the National Guard. It's about the U.S. Army, which has been in play under Trump, you know, for doing things other than national defense. And now you have, you know, the Teddy Roosevelt, the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier with 5,000 soldiers aboard. And they're completely dysfunctional because of the virus out in Guam. So, you know, the problem there is the military is somehow in play in this because, and I go back to something else you mentioned. You know, if we can't solve this problem, if it goes on and on, we're talking about social order. We're talking about, you know, a situation where the government is so nonfunctional and the people are in such distress that you worry about social order. And that's when we talk about the military, either the National Guard military or the federal military. And just to tell you, and in certain academic circles on the mainland, they're talking about issues relating to martial law. Martial law to quell disturbances that may arise as a consequence or part of the coronavirus, you know, crisis. Thoughts about that? Well, I'm hopeful that we don't get there. Although it, I'm not going to say it's not going to happen, actually, because if you're talking about 30% unemployment, I mean, mass panic, I mean, all everything we're trying to do is to prevent that. But it doesn't mean it's not going to happen in some places. And that's just an incredibly dangerous situation to be in because anytime when I mean you are using the military to and people's civil liberties are suspended. I fear for I fear for our democracy, particularly given the current federal leadership. But this, we really don't have I mean there's no nothing you can really compare this to that easily except for maybe some things that happened during World War Two. And so I, I hope martial law is not declared anywhere. But it wouldn't surprise me if it is at some point for I hope a very brief period of time. I think we're just in a position that we've never really been in this country. This is why there was always so much done to prevent pandemics. Because how do you control order when people are sick when everyone is unemployed. I mean, when you begin to even become worried about the ability to deliver enough food and we're hardly there yet. I mean, I don't think we will get there. But it's, it's a dangerous time and you know, and the other thing I'll mention in relation to that is also it scares me a little bit how people have processed information about COVID-19. Some of the political science studies that are just freshly out have shown that because of the vacillation by President Trump on whether or not this was a hoax or it was just like the flu or something serious. People's decision to social distance and take this seriously is determined in many ways by their partisanship. In other words, the most conservative Republicans are the ones who still are the least likely to take this the most seriously because everything today is filtered through this partisan lens. So I think in some cases this has brought people more closely together. But in other cases, you're seen even in the response to something like a virus, the danger of the intense polarization that has occurred in this country over the last 20 years. Yeah, and the executive, the executive branch, you know, it's been happening for a long time is just more powerful than it ever was. And we have situations where, for example, everybody thinks of Rosie the Riveter. They think of World War II. They think of a full court press. We get our act together, we save the world. But that hasn't happened. And I do not understand exactly why we haven't made that full court press. He seems to get lost on a myriad of unrelated issues, including arguments that the impeachment proceedings stood in the way of his action on the current, which is ridiculous. So the one that sticks in my mind is the, what is it, the Defense Production Act, which was in which which could be a big solution here. And for some reason, our federal government is really not playing that card. Is this is this a political thing? Is it a matter of just being oblivious? Do you do you understand what's happened here? Wouldn't it be obvious that we should avail ourselves of that all across the board? I think so. I mean, I think one, one thing that we're seeing partly is it's it's more of an ideological thing than than just a strict political thing. I think that there was there's a lot of resistance to to use the power of the federal government to from from Trump and from the people in the administration to order American industry to do things. I think partly because they themselves underestimated how serious this was, and also because I just don't think it's with their their ideological image very well. You know, and that I think has been the mistake that that has occurred in this response, which is that I mean, it may be understandably because people didn't understand the severity. But this sense that, oh, well, you can have it both ways. You don't really have to shut shut down the economy and and devote all your resources to fighting the virus. We can just do a little bit of that and keep everything running. I mean, that's unlike what finally happened in World War Two under Roosevelt where everything was devoted to the war effort. And I think that's that's what we need to be thinking about right now. There's going to be tremendous economic devastation, but we're never going to be able to recover until people are safe, until we have enough equipment for hospitals, until the virus is under control. Everything else really doesn't matter at this point. And I think maybe the Trump administration is beginning to realize that, but much longer. It took them much longer than it should have. And it's not just Trump. I should say this. I mean, you can look at European leaders like Boris Johnson, who also didn't take it as seriously as they should have governors, particularly governors in the south. And so I think that's really been the trouble is this sense and it's one that comes from I think Republicans and their sense that they should protect business at all costs that has led to this delayed response. Yeah, and your point about Europe is touching because when you look at a world map and see the effect of the coronavirus on the world everywhere, every continent, huge numbers in countries that have no infrastructure to deal with it, but have huge populations that are all approximate and uneducated about what to do. So, you know, this is this is so big. And the problem is that we're all it's a flat world. We're all related so that even if we quell it in the US, you know, and it goes wild somewhere else, it's going to creep back into the US. We should be concerned about everywhere in the world that needs to be a world leader. Don't you think I mean we're talking about a global government here, or at least global leadership. And we really don't have that. I don't see the WHO as that kind of leader. So the result is that you have to have world leadership, but we don't have that either. Right. This is a global problem. And yet, at the very time we need some sort of more global leadership. What we see is countries thickening their borders again you see this in Europe and everywhere else, trying to protect their trying to protect their own. And I mean that's partly human nature. But it's not going to be effective in this case because the virus doesn't respect these borders. And I'm hopeful maybe. Well, I should say I'm hopeful, but I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think we're going to see a huge push to some sort of global effort. I mean, it's not like it is in the science fiction movies when the aliens are invading. We're not all rallying around, you know, some sense of trying to protect the world. It seems like we're retreating into kind of our nationalist caves, which is not sustainable. So let's turn to the last major issue for you and I to discuss and that is the election. We've been fighting about the election for, well, for the whole Trump administration, isn't it? And fighting, fighting, and now this. Exactly. You know, this, how it affects the election is students are going to be writing dissertations about this for decades. Well, Trump got a little bit of a bump as as anyone who watches the polls can see basically as high as he's been since he's been president at 46%. It's not surprising. There's always this rally around the flag effect with disasters, although he hasn't gotten nearly the bump that many European leaders got or governors. I mean, Andrew Cuomo's bump in New York, for example, has been extraordinary. I think it really depends on on first how people begin to evaluate the performance of federal government and the president, how many people die from this, and how quickly the economy can recover. I mean, I think this is very damaging to his reelection chances, but at the same time he's on TV all the time. Biden has really been crowded out. The Democrats, you know, have a problem because they don't want to politicize the reaction to the virus. That's not going to play well either. And now is a difficult time to criticize the president. So it's tough to tell how how this is going to affect the election, although if you were to push me today, I'd say that this is really going to hurt Donald Trump's election reelection chances. Yeah, but I don't I don't know about the primaries. I don't know about the convention, just like you can't have a legislative session without, you know, without a way of communicating and getting in a room somehow either virtually or really, you can't have a convention either. And if we don't have a convention, you know, that leaves the Democrats in a funny spot. And I don't know what Bernie's going to do. I mean, the better part of it for Bernie would be to withdraw and let Biden be the candidate, but he's not doing that. He does that soon. So anyway, we have so we have questions around that the whole process that leads to the selection of a Democratic candidate. And meanwhile, Trump is in the Rose Garden every day, you know, rallying and making statements that he thinks are useful for his political future. And then you get to the election itself, November, as you as you mentioned, Colin, we don't know how long this is going to last. We don't know how the voting procedures are going to be. We don't have here in this state, we don't have a legislature that can reorganize the voting procedures and make them more virtual. I don't know if that's possible. The bottom line is, you know, the result, as you mentioned earlier, is questionable. And we may have a fight, an argument, a hanging chat, may I say, a hanging chat type of argument that that can't be resolved so quickly as to who really won and whether he's entitled to stay on January 20. I'm very concerned about the future of the Republic for the lack of an election that everybody respects. How do you see this unfolding in the next few months? It's going to be, it's going to be very difficult. I mean, we in Hawaii at least are fortunate in that we already decided to move to mail and ballot. This was going to be the first election in which that occurred. And there's many, many states that have moved to mail and as well, but many that haven't. And so I don't really know how they're going to vote. I don't believe you can delay the presidential election that I don't think will be possible. So I'm worried that if there's, for example, a decision by most states to go mail in, which may be likely. Then I'm worried that people will consider those votes illegitimate or even worse that there'll be a winner announced on election night. That's one person. And then as the mail in votes trickle in, it'll change the eventual outcome, which will be very easy for people to claim fraud and demand that the or claim that the election wasn't secure. I think we're at a very dangerous time in our democracy. I'm not going to lie about that. And I don't really know. I don't know how we're going to get out of it. I think that I mean, I would like to say that that it would be a good time for people to care more about the Republic than their own narrow, narrow partisan interests. But I don't really think that's going to going to happen. And so unless it's just an overwhelming victory for Trump or Biden, I'm really worried that they're going to be considered illegitimate. Or if the virus is, you know, still on a rampage or, you know, a second wave rampage, Trump might say this is not the time for an election. Let's hold up on this and then you get a kind of 1933 approach to things. Right, right. I mean, that would be the ultimate nightmare. You know, the one thing you said a minute ago that really catches me is this whole notion about how a crisis like this should bring us together because we're all affected. The virus doesn't know boundaries. It doesn't know ideologies. It doesn't know political positions. And yet, even in the crunch here, being threatened in every way, being involved in a terrible negative transform transformational experience. We still have division. We've had division for the past three years at least. And now we still have division. And you think that it would bring us together. That's what everybody says this should be bringing us together. And yet, I don't feel confident that it is bringing us together. And I guess you don't either. I don't now. I mean, it's possible as this gets worse and as people experience, everyone begins to experience it affecting their own family and friends in a way that already is happening in New York City. We may see more of that, you know, as this becomes this personal threat, these ideological concerns and partisan concerns will go away and you've seen a bit of that. For example, people coming on board with policies like social distancing when they were more divided before. But I'm worried about how easy it has been to poison people's minds through fake media through conspiracy theories and continue to and continue to keep them divided. I think that this will be a test that that no one alive, but the exception of some very, very old people have that have ever really faced in the United States. And I think how we respond to this crisis really will dictate how the country fares for the next 50 years. And this is one of the last question I would like to ask you. This is a question that I've been meaning to ask you since we set up this show and that is this Donald Trump has changed his position. He regularly lies and misstates the facts, even critical critical life and death issues. And yet his base continues to support him. It really bothers me, for example, that the conservative people are attacking Fauci, who is clearly a credible person in the landscape. So what you what you have is the base is acting, perhaps on what he said before, they're not picking up on what he's saying now or maybe they're getting other, you know, some sub messages from him that make them so troubled. And why the base supports him why his his ratings have gone up when it's obvious how many footfalls he has had and subjected us to over the past few weeks at a time of crisis astounds me. The base is supporting him his ratings are going up. Why Colin, there must be a good political science reason why. Well, I mean, this is Trump's the loyalty of Trump's base is extraordinary for for any president. But I think it's it's tribalism, because people have now defined themselves as Trump supporters, and any any information that indicates that he's not doing a good job is just is just rejected or considered an attempt by his enemies to try to to try and get him to lose the election. I mean, I don't think we've ever seen anything quite quite like this. I mean, but it also on the flip side it also explains why even in a crisis situation like this he's not able to gain support, because independence and Democrats have determined a long time ago that no matter what he does, they don't like him. And so he will continue to be stuck with this group of intensely loyal supporters. I really can't explain entirely their deep affection for him. I'm not sure anyone really can. I think it's a combination of getting the policies they've wanted. Some respect for authoritarianism may feeling like he represents them in a way that that past Republican presidents haven't. But it is a dangerous poisonous combination of identity politics and, you know, a certain American paranoia. Well, one thing is clear, Colin. It's not over. In fact, it's subject to a dynamic as we watch every single day we watch it change, watch new and horrendous events taking place, new and horrendous numbers. And I hope that I can circle back with you in a few weeks to see how you feel about those changes and and see how it is affecting our future. Tell me you'll be available. I'll be available. I think we're at the end of the beginning now. And so now we're going to start the a much more dangerous phase. Yeah. Oh, my God. I'm going to have to have a gimlet immediately. Thank you very much, Colin. Thanks for coming around. Thanks for these thoughts. Really appreciate it. You take care and stay safe.