 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Bingo, two o'clock, rock. I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech. And with me is John David, and hi, John. Yeah, it's good to be here again. Professor of History at HPU, wonderful to have you here. And we're initiating the notion of Trump Week. There's other sites and video organizations around the country that cover Trump, one called Trump Government that interests me. Oh, that's interesting. What's it like? How is this world different in terms of government than before? And we need to look at it. We need to see it in a historical context. Yes, I agree. So what's happened this week? I mean, within the last week or two, anyway. So I think the biggest thing at Capitol Hill, at least, was the failure of the health care. The Republicans failed to repeal and replace Obamacare. And the thing is, this indicates that the Republican Party might not be able to govern as it's currently constituting. I mean, you have the right wing of the Republican Party is insistent that they're not going to compromise at all. It's going to have to be some compromise for them to govern. And they've been called out by their leadership in the Senate. So this is a very big issue going forward. Tax reform coming up, they're going to have the same problem because Trump would like to link tax reform to a border tax on goods coming into the United States. And the Chamber of Commerce, which is a very conservative organization, has already come out very strongly against it. They're organizing right now to stop this bill dead in its tracks. So once again, you have a divided Republican Party that can't, that is, we'll see. They might be able to get taxes done. But I think it's going to be very difficult if Trump insists on a border tax, which is essentially a tariff. That's what we're talking about. A bad effect on the American consumer and American business. It could have all kinds of bad effects, a bad effect on the American economy. It could damage relations with other nations. One could argue that it led to war in the late 1930s. So there's all kinds of bad ramifications here. So I mean, you talk about the ability to govern. You talk about the ability, I suppose, of Congress to come together, which certainly it hasn't been together in a long time, and how it can work, if at all, with the president. And I guess my first question has so many questions about this, really. My first question is, what drives him? It certainly can't be anything simple. And I mentioned in this context this book I'm reading called Democracy in Chains, which where an investigative reporter went to the South that she found out about James Buchanan, who had this long view of trying to turn the government upside down, of taking the money and putting in the hands of the rich, taking it away from the poor, no social safety net, back to robber baron days. And it's a long plan by James Buchanan, who died in around 2000, and sort of a way for there to be a constitutional revolution, he called it. And they tried with the benefit, they are trying with the benefit of the Koch brothers, to fund a national initiative to change things, to move in that direction. And they have been, to some extent, successful by having Republican right-wingers run for office, funding them against, in primaries, funding them against the middle of the road Republicans, so that the whole Republican machine has turned. I think it's a certain danger in saying, well, these are the same Republicans as before, they're not. There's so many different members of Congress now that we would not have elected a few years ago. So the whole thing is in process, the Koch machine, if you will, is in process. And so what drives Trump knowing that he's going to run into so many issues within the Republican Party and within the Republican establishment, if you will? Well, of course, the question of what drives Donald Trump, that's a kind of frightening question. So I'm not sure I can answer that. Only Trump knows, and I think he doesn't know on any particular day. But I do think what's driving him right now in a political sense is Trump is a very insecure person. And he has decided, I don't think he even decided. I don't think he even thought about it. He is governing for this very small part of the electorate, 30% or less. And it's also a minority of the Republican Party, the Tea Party and the extreme freedom caucus types. He's governing towards them. So the decisions he's making are the rest of us, who cares? He's really governing towards this very small minority. So this indicates the terribly fragmented nature of the Republican Party, that they can't elect a leader that would actually not even be able to lead their whole party much less the whole country. And of course, there's a historical context to that. Yeah, we should talk about that. Have we been here before? Or is this brand new material? No, we have actually been here before. We were here in the late 70s, late 60s, early 70s with the Roosevelt Coalition, the New Deal Coalition. And there was a similar fragmentation that had taken place over decades. So when Roosevelt got elected and then re-elected in 1936, he really put together a terrific coalition. It was pretty amazing. I mean, he won four elections. It's a great politician. Well, really a mastermind of putting politics together and putting this coalition together. So he had southern Democrats who had always been Democrats. He put southern Democrats together with African-Americans, who hadn't gotten quite to the level of the Civil Rights Movement yet, but who were moving in that direction. Urbanites, the working class, the labor unions, and new immigrants, and then liberals. So all of these folks voted for Roosevelt. That didn't come easy. So you had to be a master politician, too. Right. And the way he did this was in 1935, he decided he had to push his agenda to the left. And he passed the Social Security Act. He passed the Wagner Act, which established the National Labor Relations Board, the National Labor Relations Act. This was a direct appeal to unions to vote for him. And then he passed the WPA. He pushed all of these things through Congress. The WPA was a works program. It was a program for unemployed people. So it helped poor people. So Roosevelt did all of that, and then he reaped the gains in the election of 1936 when these folks who had seen this said, well, I'm going to vote for Roosevelt because he's supporting me. So he was able to actually shift the entire electorate to the left in so doing this and put together a very durable coalition, at least for another 40 years. It wasn't really until 1980 with Ronald Reagan that this coalition fell apart. This was a very important piece of American history. It was incredible because he developed the New Deal, the New Deal which the Republican Party is continuing to attack and to try to dismantle today. But they've been superbly unsuccessful at it actually. The healthcare issue is another demonstration that American people want the government to work for them. They don't want no government. They want a government that actually helps them. So, but the problem with the coalition from the first was that you had two warring parties in the coalition, Southern Democrats and African Americans. So these two groups went at it. And by 1948, Southern Democrats were beginning to leak out of the New Deal coalition. This is of course the year when Harry Truman ran for president and Truman, he was in trouble actually. He didn't know whether or not he was going to get reelected and so he decided to go for the African American vote. He did this by desegregating the military in the summer of 1948. Interesting. Yeah, and this is something. There's a big focus in those days who's just after the war. We still have a big military. Civil rights advocates had been pushing for this for some time. So, but then during the Democratic National Convention, Hubert Humphrey, mayor of Minneapolis gets up and gives a speech in which he says the Democratic Party needs to move out from under the shadow of state's rights and into the bright sunshine of civil rights. And the Democrats from the South got up and they left the convention hall. Really? They didn't like that. Yeah, they formed their own political party called the Dixie Crats and they ran Strom Thurman, senator as their presidential candidate. So this marked the beginning of the end of the New Deal coalition. So it became more and more fragmented after that. Again in 1960, Southern Democrats ran their own presidential candidate. And then in 1960, George Wallace ran as an independent and actually got 13% of the vote. That 13% if it had gone, if it had stayed in the Democratic Party, Hubert Humphrey would have easily been elected. But without it, he lost by 500,000 votes to Richard Nixon. Which was more in those days than it would be today. That's correct, that's correct. But that, so that marked the real unraveling of the New Deal coalition. Then it remained for, where was Kennedy on this? Kennedy in 1960, just like Truman in 1948, wanted the African American vote. He also wanted Southerners' votes and that's why Lyndon Bates Johnson became his vice presidential candidate. But he wanted the African American vote and so he got into contact with Martin Luther King Jr. And Southern Democrats were outraged about this. It split the Democratic Party but not enough. I think Johnson made a big difference for Kennedy and Kennedy won the election in a very close election. So you've got this situation where it got tighter and tighter for the Democratic Party and then they lost in 1968 and then they lost in a landslide in 1972. And by that time you had Democrats who were really hard boiled Democrats beginning to vote for Republicans, including what we would call Archie Bunker Democrats. Very important. You remember the show Archie Bunker, of course. Archie was a working class guy. He was an immigrant, ethnic voter. And Archie Bunker was the type of voter who began to vote Republican. Why? Because African Americans moved into his neighborhood because they, because he- It's Archie Bunker the whole thing. Yeah, because he believed that LBJ, Lyndon Bates Johnson, had given too much to African Americans- The Civil Rights Act of 1968. That's correct that he was kind of preferentially giving stuff to African Americans, tax payers, dollars that Archie was paying out of his paycheck. So there was this politics of resentment which actually worked very well and it worked in 1972 and then it worked again in 1980 and Reagan got about 70% of the Archie Bunker Democrats. Interesting. These are working class types. They belong in the Democratic Party but they voted for Reagan. So the country's turning right and the country's turning race. Race is a big issue here. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is, it's a very important issue because it's the issue that keeps Southern Democrats, it moves, pardon me, Southern Democrats into the Republican Party. This kind of coded campaign against African American welfare mothers. That keeps Southerners, that moves Southerners into the Republican Party and keeps them into the Republican Party. So it's really race versus class issues and in the history of the United States, race has always trumped class. Don't use that term. Sorry. Okay, we're gonna take a break. Not because you use that term. That's John David and Professor of History at HBU and we're talking about Trump Week and all the things that flow out of the events and developments in our time, including some scary ones. We'll talk about after this break. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, which streams live on thinktechhoai.com, uploads to YouTube, and broadcasts on cable OC16 and Olelo 54. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is My Main Land. Here on Think Tech Hawaii Fridays at 3 p.m. Hawaiian Standard Time. We explore environmental issues, political issues, keeping it local, any way we can. Aloha. Okay, we're back, we're live. We're here with John David here at, well, Trump Week on Think Tech. And we're talking about the things that have happened lately and how they fit in historical context. So the directions, the vectors, the historical sea changes that you described a minute ago, are they still in play? Yeah, so Ronald Reagan wins in 1980 by putting together a new coalition. And that new coalition includes the Archie Bunker Democrats. It includes the religious right. It includes conservative, traditional conservative Republicans. And so Reagan puts this coalition together. Some have argued that the coalition really didn't survive the 90s when, of course, Bill Clinton won two elections as a Democrat. But if we could argue that it has survived into the 21st century, then there's been a new addition to the Reagan coalition. And that's the Tea Party. The Tea Party in 2009, 2010, when it formed, this was a real innovation. And the Tea Party started running its own, and just as you said earlier, Jay, it started running its own candidates against other Republicans. And so it's actually actively trying to destroy the Reagan coalition and create a new, a new, extremely- It's a transmutation of the whole Republican thing. Yes, a new, extremely conservative Republican party. The problem with this, of course, is that most Americans don't identify as extremely conservative. A very small proportion, maybe 25% of them. They have more power now than they did five years ago. And so this is the part of the Reagan coalition that Trump decided to use. And he didn't think he could win. We didn't think he could win. I think of it as a kind of rip in time, honestly. Yeah, because he shouldn't have won, running with this small minority. But he had a kind of unconventional approach. He had a populist message at a moment when populism was, you know, we don't think about this typically, but Obama won twice on a populist message and then became a very conventional, much more kind of conventional president when he came into power. But so Trump used a populist message and then there was a very weak Democratic candidate. Let me ask you this. So we go back, say, you know, 2010 or so, or 2008, nine, 10. And we have the emergence of the Republican party where ideology is more important, where they'd rather bring the country down than capitulate or negotiate on a given point, the Tea Party approach. And I was always like shocked by that because I felt it was a violation of their oaths of office to defend the Constitution, do the right thing by the country as a whole. But they don't do that. They take one point, maybe it's abortion rights and hold up a whole slate of legislation on that until they get their way, stamping their feet. Strange that, I wonder if that's ever happened before, you manipulate the whole system on one issue and it's an issue where not everybody agrees. Yeah, sure, it has happened. And it happened in the 1850s when in this case Democrats who did not wanna hear about the slavery issue and abolition, because of course they were deeply supported by slaveholders in the South, Democrats were getting all of these petitions from the abolitionist movement out of New York State and some other places, mostly New England. But these abolitionists were sending dozens and dozens and dozens of petitions to be read on the floor of the Congress. That was the movie Lincoln, Stephen Spielberg. But that was the practice. They had to read the petitions. Well, there were so many of them that it was clogging up business. And they wanted that. Well, that's what, yes, the abolitionists wanted that. Holding hostile, holding Congress hostile. They wanted this, and so the Democrats who controlled the Congress put in a so-called gag rule which prevented these petitions from being read on the floor. It's a long way from pure democracy, I would say. So here we are. It's never been pure democracy, in fairness. Hey, thank you for that, it's true, I know. I only say that. It isn't now, so. So say, you know, 2010, we had the Tea Party emerge. And now we have Trump, and there's a resonance going on. They have a resonance with him and he has a resonance with them. But what is it that brings them together and how healthy is that resonance? Well, okay, so the other thing about Trump is that he's not a typical populist. He's actually a businessman. So he brings in the financial republicans. They voted for him because they think, hey, he's a businessman. The Wall Street guys actually supported him, even though he talked about tariffs, which Wall Street does not like at all. So here's the thing. I think that we haven't really understood this very well, that the Republican Party in electing Donald, in choosing Donald Trump, did not grapple with some fundamental issues. What is the identity of the party? Is it gonna be a pro-trade party or a tariff party? Is it the party of American supremacy or the party of American isolationism? They didn't have these conversations. Instead, they were transfixed by the spectacle of Trumpism. Okay, and then once he was elected, I think many republicans thought, well, we're gonna have this conversation now about what the party is about. No, they still haven't had that conversation. So the problem with the idea that Trump will transform the electorate and push it all, like Roosevelt did, push it all to the extreme right is he's done nothing to convince the American people. There's been no conversation. That's why healthcare failed. That's why it's quite possible that tax reform will fail because he hasn't made the case. The truth is he doesn't know what the case is. So if you don't know what the case is, you're gonna have a tough time actually making the case. Yeah, well, if you have an ignorant leader, you pay a big price. But, but, I didn't say that. I don't mind, but the query though, what about the leadership in Congress? I mean, doesn't some of the responsibility for this fall on them? Why do you expect that Trump is gonna solve these problems, address these issues? He's not up to it. Why don't they do it? They seem to have faded off the stage lately. Well, no, I mean, I think the Senate is where this is going to happen. And it already did happen with John McCain kind of calling the Senate to task and then sticking with it, sticking by his word. Okay, that's what American politics is about. And that's what this country needs right now. It's politicians of integrity standing up. Men of courage, so to speak, standing up and saying, yeah, standing up and say, hey, wait, wait, this is wrong, we're not gonna do this. So I think that it's going to happen in the Senate. Quite frankly, it's gonna be close. But I think you've got a small group of moderate Republicans there who are pretty, who have decided, you know what? We're not for Trump. The problem for Trump is he's attacked every one of them. He attacked McCain. He attacked Murkowski. He attacked the Senator from Maine. He's attacking his own party. So this is an extension of this very self-destructive Tea Party movement, which was, you know, they attacked their own candidates. So you're gonna see more of this. And I think the upshot of this is that the Reagan coalition is in the midst of its collapse. It's collapsed. Yes, so I know it's strange to say it. The Republicans have a lot of political power right now, but it's not gonna last. How do you see it devolving? Well, I think the biggest division right now is between moderate Republicans and the extreme right of the party. And they're not gonna agree on Trump. And if Trump can't even agree himself on what he stands for, then they're just gonna fight it out with one another. And I think, you know, voters who came out for Trump, especially in rural areas, might be one-time voters because they're already disillusioned about what's going on in Washington. So as the party, the coalition, the Republican, the Reagan coalition, or the legacy of the Reagan coalition devolves, what happens? What happens to Trump and his policies? His ability, what you've already indicated, it's gonna be hard for him to get any of his issues through. But what happens to the regular ebb and flow of government work? What happens to the efficacy of Congress? What happens to the relationship of Congress with its constituents? Right, right, so the, but the other thing about the American presidency in the 20th and 21st century is still very powerful. And so Reagan has already, pardon me. Not so Freudian slip there. Trump has already exerted quite a bit of power through executive orders and is changing our policies on the environment. That's what Obama did. That's true. It's true because we live in a divided country and it's hard to get a consensus. The only way to get anything done, yeah. So, but the Democrats have made it clear they want to work with Republicans and Democrats could actually benefit here. Okay, so the Democrats could maybe pull votes away from the Republicans if they do it carefully. And they could develop a kind of big tent centrist approach which could really benefit them in 2018. And even in 2020, we don't know what will happen with Trump and the Russia investigation. The problem for the Republican party right now is if they wanted to get rid of Trump, they've got this 30%, 30% of the electorate says whatever Trump does is fine with me. I still support him. Will that change if the party comes apart? Yeah, I mean, it's already changing. The truth is that his base has really begun to erode quite badly. I think religious right voters are getting sick of him because they see him as immoral and traditional conservative Republicans who are financial Republicans are going, what, wait, you can't put tariffs on and so that's gonna be a big fight. So, this- And you see it in Pence. Yeah. I mean, is this issue about, is Pence gonna run against him or not is he collecting money or not and the answer is yes, he will and he is collecting money and he can deny it but I think it's clear from the newspapers that he's doing exactly that. So, and Pence would be a much more conventional, traditional conservative Republican and he could actually win the nomination on that basis but what's he gonna do with the Tea Party types? The extreme right wing of the party. You're gonna oppose him. And so his message, unless he goes completely populist will not be populist. And therefore it's gonna be, you're gonna see the Republican Party, the votes of the Republican Party shrinking and I think, you know, they've, unfortunately, they set themselves on a pathway to minority party status in the future. Yeah. But the Democrats have a hard row also. I mean, they've lost their primacy. They've lost their vision, some people think. They're not as serious as they might be. They're not as organized and their leadership hasn't really surfaced and you really wonder, you know, and it seems to me that all of these elected officials have a duty to defend the Constitution. They all have a duty to make a deal. They all have a duty to keep the country balanced and they're not doing that. So the question I put to you was, what does the next coalition look like, John? It's hard to know. I mean, you know, right now it looks like coalition building would come from the extreme right or the extreme left, right? Well, that's risky business, isn't it? And I agree with that. I think it is risky business. I think that, you know, I think one good election would cure the Democrats, you know, pretty well. But I do think the Democrats have to take account of the fact that they got beat at the polls on the issue of populism, which is their issue. They didn't get beat on national security. No, Hillary was actually stronger on national security. They didn't get beat on the economy. The economy was strong. The economy was not, you know, it wasn't something that overturned the election. It was the question of what is the Democratic Party doing about people whose incomes have stayed stagnant? The kind of the lower third of the electorate. They lost touch with that, right, right. And what's very interesting is a week ago, maybe a little less, the end of last week was the piece of the paper that really struck me, is that they were at least considering bringing anti-abortion principles and players in under the Democratic tent. That their platform now had room, I guess in order to reach some kind of populist approach to things, to allow for anti-abortion, which to me is a tremendous violation of all the trust that the supporters of the Democratic Party have put to them for all these 30, 40 years. So this is the debate of the Democratic Party. Will it become the multicultural party? Will it go back to its roots in the working class and in the Archie Bunker Democrats? Will it go back in that direction? I think the Democratic Party has always been fractious and I think it can actually go in both directions. Quite honestly, I think it has to go in both directions, but it needs leadership that can manage those different factions. The working class faction, the rural faction, and then the multicultural faction. Well, here's a hard question for you, John. We have a president who, short of some amazing revelation about the Russian connection, is probably gonna stay in office, even though he does very crazy things, my word. But do we have the time to go through this process? Because the iterations you've described in the past, the American experience you've described, sometimes it takes decades to reach balance or at least a new paradigm on these political connections. And this war he's talking about with North Korea, it doesn't give us a lot of time. Any minute, it counts somehow. So do we have time for this? Well, that's gonna happen. I mean, we'll have to see. I mean, the comment on North Korea is very dangerous. I mean, it belongs in a novel, not out of the words of the president. Maybe a B movie, yeah. No, it's very dangerous, and but I think he's got enough of national security people who have cooler heads, who can prevail in that particular debate. The real issue is that with all of the fuss about the language, the kind of the noise that comes out of Trump's mouth, is that the North Korean problem is not being worked on or at least we don't know that it's being worked on. I mean, there should be a very strong approach to the Chinese to restart multilateral negotiations. I mean, that's the way out of this. Now they joined in the sanctions, the United Nations, but that's not what he wants from them. That's not what we want from them, it's more. Right, right, so that's definitely an issue. We need to keep the country together. There's no doubt about that. But I- He doesn't care to be a leader of the country, does he? Trump has not ever, no, I mean he's, that's one of his characteristics is he's an insecure guy and so what he did is he has responded to those who just fell in love with him, this small part of the extreme, small part of the electorate that just loves him unconditionally. And that's what, apparently that's what he needs is that kind of unconditional love. The best reality show, the best reality show ever, better than The Apprentice for sure. It's quite a story, but I think we're actually living it, right? And part of his thing is to be unpredictable. So that's why my last question to you was the most difficult question of all, here on Trump week, our discussion of Trump. So John, given all that we've discussed on all of these historical processes, what do you think is gonna happen next week in Trump week? Oh, I have no idea. I wouldn't even venture again. Does anyone know? Jay, I'm a historian. I don't prognosticate. Thank you, John, David, dad. Wonderful to talk to you, hello. It's good to be here with you.