 Hello, and thank you all for coming to tonight's communications forum. My name is Seth Mnukin, I'm the director of the forum and will be the moderator this evening. We have these talks roughly three times this semester. We would love it if you all would let us know how to reach you with that sign up sheet so we can let you know about future talks. We will not spam you. We will only get six emails a year or three a semester, so it's not very onerous. Our next forum is in two weeks from tonight. Is that right, Chris? I think two weeks from tonight. April 26th, when Kevin Young, who is the New Yorker's poetry editor and the director of the Center of African American History and Culture at the New York Public Library, will be here talking about his new book, Bunk, about the rise of hoaxes and fake news. And the way communications forums run is we will have a conversation for roughly an hour, at which point we'll open it up to all of you for roughly another hour. And that's pretty much it as far as ground rules go. So without further ado, let me introduce our panel. To my immediate left is Stuart Stevens, a political consultant who's worked on presidential campaigns for Bob Dole and George W. Bush, served as the lead strategist for Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign and helped elect more governors and U.S. senators than any GOP consultant working today. Stevens is also an author and founding partner of the consultancy firm Strategic Partners in Media. He has served as a strategist and media consultant to Governor Tom Ridge, Senator Strecht Grassley, John McCain, Thad Cochran, Roger Wicker, Dick Luger, and many others. He's also written scripts for Northern Exposure and has written novels and also does some journalism, including a very, very memorable piece for outside like 15 years ago now, right? Probably. Even if I'm taking charge. Yeah, yeah. Yes. We can arrange that. Next, Jennifer Nasser is the founder of Conservative Women for a Better Future, a nonprofit organization dedicated to electing more conservative women in the Northeast. She's also the former chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party and during her tenure, Republicans won the U.S. Senate seat held by Scott Brown, otherwise known as the Kennedy seat up until that point. And doubled their ranks in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. And then on the end, Dr. Daniel Barkoff, did I get your last name right? Barkoff. Is president of Veterans for Responsible Leadership, a nonpartisan political action committee that supports veterans who have demonstrated integrity and rational thought as they run for positions in local, state, and federal elections. He served for seven years as a member of the Naval Special Warfare Unit, otherwise known as Navy SEALs, and is currently a faculty member and an emergency medicine doctor at the University of Vermont. So I thought I'd start out just by asking all of you how you got into politics, what brought you into into politics and sort of why don't we start with you? Oh, and I grew up in Mississippi. All right. I'm a 17-generation Mississippian and when I grew up was sort of in the Mississippi burning days. So politics and all its forms were very much part of our lives. My family was close to a wonderful man named William Wiener, who I had the distinction of working at all his campaigns, losing campaigns for governor. He was three times the most. And then finally I quit working for him and he got elected. There you go. But he was, he went against the last about segregationists in Mississippi and lost. And I just found politics just absolutely, it was just like, it was fascinating. Then in Mississippi everyone was pretty much a Democrat and the Democrats were Eastland, Stennis. And I gravitated toward working for Republicans. That talk was the first because they were sort of running against that machine. And politics is one of those funny business when you sort of start working on one side, you end up staying on that side. So that, that's how I get it. Okay. Jen? So I grew up in New York and my dad died when I was 10 of a massive heart attack. And I wanted to go to school to be a doctor. So I wanted to be a cardiologist. And I decided it was a really good idea to go to Stony Brook University, which has a medical school. And got there and realized I probably wasn't as smart as I thought I was. I was when I, if I was at a school that wasn't committed to sciences. And during the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I was working in my local village hall. And man came in and just said that he was going to get signatures on petitions. And I said, for who? And he said, why are you interested in politics? I said, yeah, I am. For who? Why do you want to know what you're signing here? Well, he wasn't asking me. He was just saying that he was getting them. And he goes, oh great, made a phone call. And then 30 seconds later, I'm on the phone with this woman who said, come to my house tonight and get the petition forms. And so in New York, I lived in Nassau County, which is still kind of the last bastion of GOP political machines. And I went to her house and it was everyone from Al DiMotto and George Pataki. And I went out and I grew up in this town and I worked in our, not only did I work in the village hall in the summer, but I worked in our local, one of the local restaurants throughout all of high school and college. And I went and I got maybe eight forms, 50 signatures, and I went back the next day and I hand them to the woman and she goes, wait, you got this all done? And I'm like, yeah, I know everyone in town. So I had another 50 and I got those and I brought those in. So I collected the most signatures of anyone in my town. I was 19 years old. I had, I was going to school to be a doctor. And I went back to school and I changed my major to be a polysine major. And then I graduated from college and my first job was with a state senator. And then that was kind of it. And then I moved here. I have three daughters and Donald Trump was elected president. That's it. There we go. All right. Sinked into the point. Okay. So one thing I was interested in is what all of your perspectives were during the campaign. Stuart, I know you, like most of the world, thought that Trump didn't have a chance in the primary and then probably didn't have a chance in the general election. Conventional wisdom certainly seemed to be wrong. But as this was unfolding, Dan, I don't know if you identified as a Republican, but this was a party that both of you have been identified with for your adult lives. What was that experience like seeing this figure sort of take over the party? So out of the 16 candidates, I think I would have voted for like 13. And I knew I knew it got bad when I was on a plane with someone that I knew from Massachusetts and going down to Florida. And I spent three hours telling her how Ted Cruz would be a better president than Donald Trump. Is he on your list of 13? No, I mean, my politics are nowhere near Ted Cruz's. So it's like if I was saying that, then you know, things were getting bad. And I also have three daughters. And I just couldn't believe it. To me, it was so much, right? I've been a Republican since I was able to vote. And the man, number one, wasn't a real Republican. I mean, he was a registered Democrat. And then just became a Republican all of a sudden because he knew he couldn't win as a Democrat. And then his morals and values, wait, I'm sorry, there are no morals and values. And so that was really concerning. And he'd never seemed, I mean, growing up in New York and knowing people who knew him, he didn't pay his bills. He consistently was borrowing. So if you look at what the Republican Party is, and it's the Party of Family, that's not what he was embodying. The Party of Fiscal Responsibility, not what he was embodying. And so it was really upsetting to me. And it just continued to go. I mean, with the day of the Billy Bush expose, I was horrified. I just said, that's it. I mean, it's one thing that he does what he does. But it's another thing that he's on a live mic and he gets caught saying it. And then it's just locker room talk. I don't know guys that do that. Right. Look, a lot of people are wrong about Donald Trump in 2016, but arguably I was the most wrong. I think that Donald Trump has always benefited, Dan and I were talking about this driving down from Vermont, from the inability to imagine him winning. And I think in the primary, the consensus of these other candidates, and I have a lot of friends working in those, and I've done five of these presidential campaigns. And this nominating process is always fraught. They had the not insane idea that all you have to do is get along with Donald Trump. Because obviously the Republican Party is not going to nominate Donald Trump. So you just want to be one on one and you're not going to be Donald Trump and you're going to win. So hence all of this effort beating up on each other, not to be Donald Trump, which turned out to be a tragic flaw and he benefited from it. I think in the general election, he benefited from a lot of protest votes that didn't really imagine him being president. But I personally think when he came out for the Muslim ban, that the party, Reince, should have treated him the way that we treated Todd Akin in Missouri, who was a Senate candidate in 2012, who said these horrible things about women and rape. And the party just said, okay, this may cost us a Senate seat, but we can't stand behind this and Akin lost. I think he should have done that when a Muslim ban is nothing but a religious test. And he should have stepped forward and said, we're not going to do this. You can run, we can't stop you from running, but the Republican Party, as long as I'm leading it, is not going to stand behind you. Governor Romney gave that tremendous speech that he gave on Trump. Once you don't do that, you just sort of get caught in these constant bargains with yourself. Okay, he's not Hillary Clinton. Okay, we'll get this judge or we'll get that. And it's just this, I think, really unfortunate process. And what people forget about Faust is not just the soul of your soul is a devil, but the devil didn't deliver. You didn't get what you wanted. And I think now that's being played out. Dan, during the campaign, if you had time to sort of think about politics with three incredibly young girls at that point, could you see yourself sort of getting engaged in this way? Or was this something that happened as soon as, you know, the day after the election? No, it was about a week after the election, really. But, you know, the no, just like everyone else, you know, we didn't think he was going to win. You know, I was not a huge Hillary Clinton supporter either, but leaps and bounds above, you know, that I thought most people would see it in that way. So now this is never something I anticipated or planned on or anything like that. Right, right. But Dan, let me just jump. So that your group that really grew out of a Facebook group, what, why don't you just... Yeah, so, I mean, we, so, you know, people complain on Facebook all the time. That's, that's what happened. So, you know, VFRL came about because my Naval Academy buddies and I were complaining about this on Facebook. And this is after the election. This is after the election. You know, we kind of floated the idea of starting a Facebook group, which pretty quickly got a couple hundred members. And then, you know, we decided to incorporate. And so we incorporated it as a, you know, as a, as a pack and, you know, which took about four minutes of research and probably twice that much time to actually do the paperwork. And, you know, it's, it sort of started to resonate. The thing that surprised me about Trump, I mean, Trump, Trump voters are by and large, the parts of the country where he does well are areas that provide a lot of people to the military. And, you know, so you have this selection bias where, you know, people in the military are generally predisposed to like guys like Trump or, you know. And guys like Trump meaning, well, you know, like the bluster, the machismo or, yeah, I think, I think there's, you know, Stuart and I were talking about this the way down to, I think there's something to, you know, parts of red states in this country part, you know, and it is the red states that contribute people to the military. You know, I'm from Massachusetts and we're pretty close to last in, you know, having people sign up. And, you know, these parts of the country that contribute a lot of people to the military, you know, they really do, you know, come from more of an honor culture. You know, there's much more comfort with combat, with, you know, kind of these notions of masculinity that, you know, that, you know, for better or for worse exist. And those people a lot of times are, you know, going to vote for someone with a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. And that's how, that's what I think happened in this election. I think that this election was one big FU to, you know, the establishment, so to speak. But you talked, I mean, the other day when we were on the phone, you talked about how during the Clinton presidency, how there was this kind of revulsion at Clinton's lies surrounding Monica Lewinsky. I think you said something like, you know, Trump tops out every day before breakfast. So how does that sort of reconcile itself? Where does the revulsion against dishonesty, how is that so easily trumped by the sort of machismo, the honor by that sentiment? So I think there's two competing, and this is the entire idea of VFRL, you know, to back up in a second. What I'm trying to do, what we're trying to do is convince veterans not to vote for Trump. And we're going to do it in states where there are a lot of veterans and where the margins were pretty narrow. And specifically, that's Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. And, you know, we're talking specifically, we're going to do it by taking public information from the VA about where people are using the GI Bill. And when you look at the numbers, there's enough veterans enrolled at colleges to swing two of those three states right now using the GI Bill. So what I'm counting on, you know, back to your question is that the way I view it is there's sort of two competing honor codes. And, you know, honor is, you know, I'm kind of a, I'm a cynical guy, I have a cynical sense of humor, but, you know, the military culture of honor is the, is why people are soldiers are able to go into combat and give their life for one another. That integrity, honesty, strength, courage, that's an honor code, right? It's competing, you know, for folks from, you know, red states and in some ways it's competing against a somewhat overlapping honor code that they grew up with. That is, you know, maybe not as prominent in, you know, a place like Massachusetts or Cambridge or something like that, but, you know, if you, if you spend time around, you know, kind of a working class environment, I think you'd be familiar with it. So what has surprised me about the Trump voters is not how many Trump voters, you know, or, sorry, rather, how many military folks voted for Trump. What's surprising to me is how many military folks don't like Trump, which actually is a sign to me that that kind of second honor code that, you know, people are inculcated when they go to boot camp, when they go to Iraq for a year and walk foot patrols in Fallujah, but that's more powerful at least for some people. So that's the idea. Right. Jennifer, you said that during the campaign, you know, you thought, well, clearly he's not going to succeed because he's not a Republican. He doesn't embody fiscal responsibility, you know, family values, moral values, religious tolerance. And when we were, again, talking to Stuart, I think you raise a point that maybe that is what a Republican is now. I mean, if he's the head of the party, maybe we need to rethink what it means to be a Republican in 2018. What are your thoughts about that? No, I'm holding firm in my convictions of my party. No, I think it was, honestly, I think that the U.S. is still a very racist sexist society. I mean, you know, I think it's not as intelligent as everyone tries to make this out to be. It's very clear this guy is a racist sexist pig, right? And he was running against a woman and there's a large portion of the country that's looking at it saying, I don't want a woman, one, two. We just had eight years of a black man who is a Democrat, so we don't want another Democrat. We already had him. We went different. We're not doing different again. We're going back to the old white guy who has the same thoughts as we do everywhere else except for California and the Northeast. I mean, basically, that's what happened. And so, because it's amazing when you get out of the Northeast. It's even amazing in Boston. I tell friends all the time, if you sit at any restaurant in the city and sit near the bar area and sit near some millennial, not young millennials, like the 30-something-year-olds that are nicely dressed, they love Trump. They're making money. They have good jobs. They live in Boston. They're super educated. There's nothing wrong that's going on there. And then you've got the center of the country where these people are, I think, very differently. And so I think that it was so overthought as to why he wouldn't be elected, but it's so simplistic as to why he was elected. So I don't think that that's what the party is. I just think that, unfortunately, the RNC, and I blame to Ryan's a lot, took their eye off the ball, let it happen. No one had any leadership there. No one was the parent, and no one slapped him around a little bit. Everyone just let him go. Getting back to the notion of what the party is, I mean, Trump, outside of how people are voting, Trump has certainly in his policies also gotten huge swaths of the party leadership to go along with things that three years ago would have been anathema to them. But I don't necessarily agree, because I think that there are different buckets. I think that there are people who really hate Trump in the Republican Party. There are people who really hate Trump. There are people who really like Trump. And then there are people in the middle. And the people in the middle either don't approve of his, him as a person, but they like his policy or they don't approve of him as a person, but they like that he's different. They like that he's edgy. They like that he's the guy that's on fire and really shaking things up. And so I don't think that the party changed. I think it was more of a, I think it was everyone's eye was off the ball. This guy came in. No one thought he was going to win. And then he got in there. And I mean, the people who, look, does anyone here think that we don't need term limits, that the people in Congress have any sort of, I was going to say, listen, no one in Congress has a set of balls, right? That's why they're in Congress and they're not out working. Because if they're there, they're safe and they're protected. If they actually have to get a real job, then they have a real boss who's going to hold them their feet to the fire. And we as a society have let our elected officials think that they are celebrities. And because they think that they're celebrities, they're untouchable. So, I mean, that's the mess that goes on, right? So we throw everyone out and then 2020 comes. The thing is there's no one to run against them on the Democratic side. So this just keeps on going. No, in 2020, you mean. In 2020. Right. Well, yeah, although at this point in the cycle and for the 2008 election, I don't think anyone would have predicted that Barack Obama was going to get elected. So just to say, it's hard to say. Stuart, what are your thoughts about how, what the identity of the Republican Party under Trump? I'm in a pretty dark place about it. I joined the party or was drawn to the party as a place that believes in the character counts that personal responsibility is important, strong on Russia. The debt matters. And I look now and I don't know where all that went. It was as if those were just marketing slogans. And okay, so it didn't work. I mean, if you say Chevrolet is a heartbeat of America, you're not really saying there's like a heart inside of Chevrolet. So, okay, we'll just say something else. To me, I actually believe those things. And I worked for people that I felt shared those values. And a lot of them did. I mean, we were talking here, I first came to Massachusetts to work for Bill Weld when he ran in 1990, first Republican governor elected in 25 years. And it, I don't know where that party is gone. And a little more troubling, I don't know how you get it back. I don't know how you unsay the things that Trump has said. And I think the future, not that demographics are destiny, but Trump's base are non-college educated white voters. And wealthy white voters, right? I mean, it's they're sort of a marble. And wealthy, though there's fewer wealthy people. Right. But 20 years ago, that was non-college educated white voters with 60% of the electorate. Now, it's 30%. And it's rapidly declining. So, I really see Trump as a triumph of white grievance. Not that everyone voted for him was drawn by that. But I think that the ability, just numerically, having sat in these rooms and banged my head against the wall so many times to try to get to a presidential win, I think the future of the Republican Party nationally is very bleak. If you can't appeal, everything we said after the 2012 election, if you can't appeal to more non-white voters. I mean, I look at the Republican Party, I kind of think of blank word processing in 1979. Things are great. What about computers? Don't worry. So, I don't really know where the party goes. Do you still see yourself as being in the GOP? Yes. I mean, I wouldn't let Donald Trump drive me out of a party. And I work for people who I've never found a candidate I agreed with anything, but one that's good. You don't agree with one's spouse with everything. But I think that there are a lot of candidates out there that still have those values. The question is sort of where is the center of gravity? I mean, when the RNC endorses Rory Moore, where are we? Senatorial committee did, but the RNC did. And it's depressing to look at 66 percent of white voters in Alabama voted for Rory Moore. I mean, we were saved by African Americans, not for the first time, and really African American women, to be truthful. I find that just incredibly sobering. And I don't know where you, once you've been for Rory Moore, I'm not sure how you get back any sense of decency. So, if you have the National Committee supporting Rory Moore, you have- At the direction of the president. The only reason they did it is because- Sure, right. But you have the president who's the titular head of the party. You have the RNC supporting Rory Moore. You have what Trump says not only about Muslims, but about any number of groups, about any number of things. What would it take for you to feel like this was no longer your party? I mean, it seems like you've just listed a number of things that are beyond the pale. Boy, that's a bad question. I spent a lot of years actually fighting for these things. And look, I'm not trying to pretend that we were perfect. I mean, I worked for George Bush, I went down to 99, I wrote a book about the campaign. We had bad days, and we probably played on the dark side sometimes more than we should have. But we at least aspired to something you could be proud of. And on our best days, I think we came closer to that. I think that we're a very personality-driven country, and absent an alternative person emerging, it's difficult to imagine how you get out of it. But I think- How you get out of where we are now. Right. For the party, I mean. Yeah. But I think it will happen. I think it will take someone who we can't name now running and winning. And then I think there really needs to be sort of a truth and reconciliation moment where we come to grips with what has been said and a sort of ugliness that has been made legitimate in the current moment. Dan, I know you're obviously not in an active military now. I know I found it hard sometimes to just pick up the paper, but certainly hard to pick up Twitter because I'm worried every day that there's going to be a new conflict in some part of the world because Trump was constipated that morning or whatever the case is and so fired off some incendiary tweet. Do you have any sense of what the effect of his, when he threatens North Korea, when he says that we're going to bond with telegraphs' intentions about Syria, whether or not he then falls strong on that? Do you have any sense of what effect that is having on people serving today? The thing that I think maybe many people don't understand is everyone in the military nowadays is volunteer and everyone in the military nowadays wants to work. So when you get rid of the draft in 1973, you're stuck with the fact that your military wants to go to war all the time. And there are pluses and minuses to that. So I think your question is, does it have an impact on what we call morale of the troops kind of thing? Not really. I don't think we can hang that on Trump particularly. I mean, I think there's, Lord knows there's enough to talk about with Donald Trump, but I don't think necessarily that's one of the issues. And so when you were serving, you would have preferred to be in combat than not? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I mean, I was a Navy SEAL, like Navy SEALs want to go to war. Right. That's just the truth. Right. Right. As I got to know Dan and his group, one of the things I was struck by listening to him speak with some of his other Navy grads is how you were saying that when you were at the Academy, it's not that you were told to be a political, but to be a nonpartisan, but to be a partisan, not to be at all involved. Can you just speak to that? I think that's a fascinating concept. Well, I think, you know, if you have a professional, a professional military, you know, there's a whole UCMJ, there's a whole, you know, uniform code of military justice that, you know, one is not allowed to, you know, exercise one's First Amendment, you know, wearing a uniform. You know, the expectation is that you'll at least not publicly, you know, go about and kind of espouse political views or support for political candidates and, you know, sort of as it should be. And I think the best, you know, officers in our military, you know, really try to, you know, try to live that, you know, there's a reason you don't hear the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you know, weighing in on Donald Trump. So looking ahead then to 2020, what do you see as happening both in terms of in federal elections and also in a presidential election? Sort of, I know you've made the case before that for, if a president does not accept federal spending limits, as I assume that Trump will not. I think the last president who was defeated who did not accept them was Hoover, is that correct? And he had a bad year. He had a bad year, yes. So something just, most people don't, did we just talk about that before? Sure, yeah. You know, post-Watergate, we passed federal funding for presidential elections. We had sort of a cockamamie system for the primaries that sort of died out and no one literally ever understood it. But for the general election, we had a system. And when you accepted the nomination, literally when you walked off the stage after giving your speech accepting nomination at the convention, you got a check. And in exchange for that check, you agreed not to raise or spend beyond that amount of money. It was around $82 million. That started in 1976 and it went through 2008. Everybody did it. It was actually literally a check. I remember it's like, can't we wire this? No, we do checks. Was it like a big publisher's clientele check? That's why in Bushville, we moved the convention up. I mean, we moved the conventions back because we realized you're going to get the same amount of money for W. Yeah. So in 2000, we had the convention in July. And then, in 2004, we had it as late as possible. You have to do it 60 days before the election because you're going to get the same amount of money you want to condense the amount of time you have to spend that money. Now the conventions are late for no reason. It's sort of a legacy that should change. So in 2008, Barack Obama, and I think it's one of his most unfortunate legacies, decided that he would not accept federal funding after saying he would. Everybody said they accept federal funding. It was sort of a given. Now, if you read with his campaign managers, Dan... Oh, now I'm blanking. Yeah. No, no, no, not... He wrote the audacity to win. Yeah. David... He's pretty honest about it. It's a good book. He basically says, we did it because we knew we could get away with it. And we could raise ungodly amounts of money. So John McCain stayed in the federal funding system. So that meant he had 83 million. Barack Obama spent 750 million. On the day of election, Barack Obama had $33 million cash on hand, which was like... At that point, you spend stupid money. It's like... The question becomes not like, if I spend this, will I get votes? It becomes like, well, I spend this, well, I lose votes. So they still had $33 million. They couldn't get rid of on election day. McCain only had 83 to run his whole campaign. So the history of federal finance reform in general is once something sort of the genies out of the bottle, it's hard to get it back. So I don't think anyone is going to accept federal funding again. I'm a great advocate having done elections under both systems. One of the things federal funding did was level the playing field. It was intended to do that and it actually worked. So Reagan wins, beats an incumbent president under the level playing field federal funding. You have Clinton beats Bush under federal funding, under level playing field. So if you just go to the next election, whoever emerges from the Democratic primary is probably going to be broke. You're always broke when you come out of the primary. It would be true if Hillary Clinton's president, incumbent president, Brock Obama raised about $1.2 billion. If you really kind of get out of bed and get working on it, you ought to be able to raise close to $2 billion. So you're going to have incumbent president with, I mean, who knows the Trump, but could, with the potential to raise close to $2 billion, put it that way. No one says no if you're calling for the incumbent president to raise money. It's the easiest job in the world. Versus someone who's broke. So that's tough. Now maybe money doesn't mean as much as we thought it did, but still it's a very, very difficult situation. And I thought after going through this that we really in a way had the law of unintended consequences, which always happens with campaign finance, that in many ways we probably abolished the four-year term when we let federal funding go away. We'll see. It becomes an eight-year term. Basically becomes an eight-year term because it's going to be so difficult to beat. Now, well, that's a cheery thought. I mean, one other thing that you had both in 1980 and 1988 was primary challengers for sitting for an incumbent president. I mean, just in a poly-sized sense, one of the indicators that an incumbent president will lose is being primaried. So even Buchanan primary Bush in 1992 hurt Bush. Certainly Kennedy primary Carter, you would have to say, hurt. Had Bernie Sanders run against Barack Obama in 2012, it would have hurt. There's nothing else you're going to spend a lot of money. And it would have hurt. I think it's very important for lots of reasons that Donald Trump be primaried. It'll be very, very, very, very difficult to beat him. But I think there's always races worth winning, worth running, even if you go into it not winning. And as would happen with Scott Brown, sometimes you enter those races and you end up winning. Who do you see as potentially challenging? I mean, given how many national figures have sort of gone along with him, who do you see challenging him? Well, Senator Flake is out there. My old pal and client, John Kasich, those would be the two most obvious. Right? Anyone else? Those are the two I always talk about. And same exact thing. I mean, I think no one's going to, no one will beat Donald Trump. My view right now is no one beats Donald Trump at all. Donald Trump is the president for the next six years, just because... Sinai tablets are right outside the door. I know. My daughter came to me the morning after the election in 2016, walked into my room at 5.30 in the morning. I was on TV all night. I was like a zombie. I had to get ready to get back on. And she goes, are we moving to Australia? I'm a Republican. That's what my kid says to me. I think that was pretty impactful. I think he needs to be primaried because I think that people like us need some hope. And for him to get battered a little bit. But from the Democratic side, all I keep hearing from my insider Democratic friends is that they want Joe Biden. So it's like, that's great. Put up Joe Biden and Trump wins again. So it's not... It's going to be very tough for him to lose. But I think that there are Republicans that are really frustrated. And you see what happened. Chuck Grassley, Marco Rubio, we're on TV talking about if Trump goes and tries to fire Mueller, what their position is and that they don't think that that should happen and that there's a joint agreement to make sure that he's protected. I think that you start seeing when some more monkey business is played, like tax reform, everyone wanted that. And immigration reform, whether they wanted it out loud or not, they do want it. So there are certain things that they have to play in their districts and say things for their constituencies, but maybe innately they want. So they'll let that go. But I think once he starts monkeying around with the judicial system, then he's going to find himself in hot water. Okay. That's the only way you get rid of him, by the way, is if he's impeached, he resigns or the worst case scenario happens. And so pushing back against that a little bit, I mean, certainly the Trump brand in elections that have happened over the past 12 months, federal elections does not seem to be doing very well. I mean, losing a Senate seat in Alabama is pretty tough. Unless you're a disgusting individual, then you can lose. I mean, if you're a pedophile, you're going to lose. Well, I mean, the reality is, if you run the 2016 race a hundred times, Hillary Clinton wins 90 at least. I mean, if you just do the numbers, I mean, he was able to overperform. How do we go to one of those alternate? Well, he was able to overperform just enough with white votes. And she underperformed with non-white voters, just enough. Now, why there's infinite fascinating studies and books about this? I mean, it basically came down to probably four counties where this happened. And to me, that's not an indication that the politics of relying on white voters is good politics. I think it's certainly morally bankrupt. But to me, it's sort of like you have a bunch of drinks at a party, you drive home safely, you get home safely, and you decide that alcohol helps you drive better. Like, probably the wrong conclusion. Just because it happened doesn't mean that it's causative. So I think that what you've seen, I think, is re-energized democratic base. And I think what Dan is doing is so important. To have just around the margins enough of those who voted for Trump, who will be motivated by other values they have, I think is very important. But I have to say also, in those elections that Republicans have lost, and let's use Roy Moore. I think, other than us being racist and sexist, women, white educated women, Hillary Clinton, because I'm in that age group, that 35 to 55 year old age group of educated white women, looked at Hillary Clinton and said, you are not the woman who's trying to help us. And you're the one who's... You're not lifting the glass down. You're lifting it for you, and you're opening a little window for your own self. But you're not trying to get the rest of us up with you. And so where your staffers, where your campaign workers, where your daughter's friends, but we're not women that you are putting on the bench to run after you. And so I think that people, women who voted for Trump, because all of us have worked for a man like Donald Trump. We all understand how to navigate that system. And we've all worked for a woman like Hillary Clinton. And all said, we're never working for another woman like that again. And so I think what happened was white women said, I'd rather go with him because I know that beast rather than working for that bitch. I mean, that's basically, being in that realm of those women, that's how women really felt. They were whispering, I'm going to vote for him, because who cares about... The moral thing was kind of low on the totem pole of issues that they had. However, Roy Moore, women won't tolerate a man who is dating little girls. And so that's kind of a non-starter. So, I mean... They still did because in Alabama, their condition, that's a whole different mindset. I mean, really, I can... Let me just tell you, there is nine out of 10 men have looked at or made a woman who works for them feel uncomfortable in a business setting. You wear a dress, you wear... It's not Donald Trump, it's Donald Trump light. It's Donald Trump not on steroids, not the guy that said it, but it's the person who makes you feel like that. Eight out of 10 women have been sexually harassed on the job. Absolutely. So it goes to the... You get used to how to navigate that as opposed to the person who is just never going to help you. And I think that women just rejected Hillary Clinton as a whole. If you look at the numbers, they didn't go out for Hillary Clinton. Yeah, some white women. Right. Not some. An enormous amount of overwhelming majority of white educated women did not vote for Hillary Clinton between the ages of 3035 and 5055. Right. And what should she have done then to appeal to those people? So Hillary Clinton, during the convention, so I made my daughters and their friends sit and watch her speech. How old are your daughters? 14, 12, 14, 11 and 6. And so them and their friends, I made them all sit there. I shut the lights off and I said, guys, we're going to watch something. And they're like, oh, cool. We're going to watch. And I put on the Democratic convention, just as Clinton was coming out. Fun never ends. Oh, yeah. They were like, wow. We're out of here. I was like, nope, you're all sitting down. And I told all your moms I was making you watch this. So you're all watching us. And she gave her speech. And at one point, she was talking about how she moved Chelsea into her room in Stanford into the dorm and how she pulled open the drawers and she was cleaning everything out and putting all her stuff away. And I said, oh, see, if that Hillary Clinton plays through, she wins. And that Hillary Clinton left that in the convention hall and never, never, what is that? It was, it was a, it was a softer side. It was a, I understand, I understand what you're going through. So remember, women in that age group that she lost, right, are, if you're a white educated woman, chances are you have a career. You're trying to do be the superwoman. You're trying to work. You're trying to have your family. You're trying to be everything. And it's tough to do it. So you see a woman who's in power who says, I did it. I did it all. I, I totally get it. I know how hard it is. And that day that I sent my baby off to college and I, you know, it was so emotional for me and you're going to have those emotional days. That's actually, that actually is something that women can understand. And then that went away. It, it totally, you know, she, she left it and there was no emotion the rest of the time. And then, you know, it was the New York City, September 11th. You know, she wasn't feeling well. And instead of just sitting down, she lied about being sick, right? So then it's like, well, now she's not, now she's lying about being sick. Why? Because women can't be weak. We can't, we can't be sick. We can't be seen as not feeling well and having to sit down. And I think that that is, that is why we're in this mess today in 2018 is because there, there haven't been women along the way, including her, to stand up for other women and say it's okay to have those moments of weakness. So she had that moment of weakness at the convention and then it was gone. I mean, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you understand what it's like to be a white woman better than I do. But it seemed to me during the campaign that she was in a sort of between a rock and a hard place because when she would show that, then there would be pushback against like, well, that's why we can't have a woman as president. Well, she did win by three million votes. Right. Yeah. Which, you know, and Bush, when I worked for Bush and we lost by half a million, we used to joke that like anybody can get elected president when you get more votes, you know, take professionals and lose by half a million. It's not so funny now. It is very, very difficult statistically if you just run it through to lose three million votes and, and win and still win the Electoral College. It is just mathematically very, very difficult for that to happen. The probability of politics is all about probabilities and the probability of that happening are very remote, which is why all the projections, the polling really wasn't that far off. They had Hillary Clinton winning pretty much with the margin that she did. It was just a little bit of where she lost and where she underperformed. And I think that's an important thing to remember for Republicans, you know, the last time that we won the popular vote in the presidential election was 2004. And that was the only time since 1998. You know, I did the Bush campaign, the re-elect, and 88, yeah, what did I say, 98? Yeah, 88, sorry. Right, so 88, 8804, that's it. And I did 2004 and, I mean, one of the things about Bush where I will say in our favor was when you lose by half a million, you still get to win, it's very humbling. And we never thought that we had anything figured out. And we always approached it with great, that this is going to be very, very difficult. So on a election night in 2004, it was, it really came down to Ohio. But it's a very closely held thing. I mean, if 75,000 votes had changed their minds, we would have lost. So it's not like we had cracked some code. And it's just increasingly difficult to be able to win those majorities. And I think it's very, very important at the end of the debate about local college, but just sort of as a country, I think it's important for the person who gets the most votes to win. And that's, I think, going to be a real challenge here. Before we go to the audience, Dan, have you, your three daughters are all five under? Have you talked to them at all about politics? Do they have any sense of what's happening? Not yet. They say Donald Trump is bad. It's pretty much the extent of it. No, but to kind of get bringing back a little bit, I mean, I think what we're just kind of talking about, number one, I'm an optimist. I think to paraphrase the big Lebowski, like nothing is F tier, dude. So if you're a Democrat and you want Donald Trump gone, well, Michigan was 12,000 votes, guys. So 12,000 votes, that's what you need to, that's 6,000. You take away, you can fit 6,000 people in Michigan not to vote. 6,001. Okay, if you're a Democrat, that's your goal. Now if you're a Republican, I think it's important to understand what is it about Trump that appeals to those white working class voters? Well, I'll tell you. I mean, I've been around these, you know, I'm a white working class, you know, I'm not anymore, I'm a doctor now, but you know, at one time I was, you know, a white working class military and it is the chip on his shoulder. So if you want to save the Republican party, you need to find someone who fights, someone who fights without all the other stuff. I mean, you know, I was telling Stuart on the way down, James Mattis would kick the crap out of Donald Trump in the heartland. You know, I don't know if he's going to run, you know, probably not, but you know, the rock would kick the crap out of Donald Trump in the heartland. You know, but I mean, that's your challenge. So, you know, what, you know, people, he resonated with people for some reason, he resonated with folks who grew up as part of an honor culture. And, you know, if you understand that, you can harness it for good. All right, let's open it up for questions. We have two microphones, if you could go up to one of the microphones and we are recording this and then we also post a transcript later. So if you can just identify yourself so we can then say who you are instead of just random person. Okay, my name is Ron Newman and I'm a left-wing Democrat from Somerville. There are people who would argue that the trajectory that brought the Republican Party to where it is now with Trump start with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy in the 1960s when the Republicans decided instead of appealing to African Americans and, you know, drawing on the history of how the Republican Party got founded that they instead thought it would be better to appeal to white racists. Do you agree with this analysis? And if you don't, tell me why you don't. Well, as a Southerner here, I'll jump into that. You know, before 60, 64, the Republican presidential candidates could routinely get 30 to 35 percent of the African American vote, which is not great, but you get to 35, you can kind of see 40, get to 40, you know, you're kind of feeling better. And then it fell off a cliff and it's never come back. As an aside, if the same thing is happening with Hispanic voters or Republican Party's duties, in Bush we got up to 43 percent in 2004. Trump and Romney both got about 27 percent, but it's 27, 27 percent of a increasing share. So if you got the same 27 percent, you're getting fewer votes. I think that you have to sort of be honest, and if you're somebody like me, it's frankly difficult and painful, that there's a lot of truth to what you said. I think the great failure of the Republican Party pre-Trump was to appeal to African American voters, the modern Republican Party. And I worked for a lot of candidates who worked really hard to do better. And it's frustrating. And there's an interesting phenomenon that African American Republican candidates don't tend to do better with African Americans. So it's not just a question of having someone run. I think it's a moral imperative to acknowledge it and to do better. But I'll be damned if I know the road to that. Is it not appealing or was it not appealing to African American voters or appealing to white races? I mean, you talked about Mississippi burning and Reagan had the famous Nishobi, Nishobi County Fair where he, you know, miles from where the numbers were. Listen, I was there and I grew up going in the Nishobi County fairs. I don't, I might be naive about this. I did not see that fraught with symbolism to go to Nishobi County. No, but to go to Nishobi County and talk about state's rights. Yeah. I don't know. I don't, I think it was, to me, it was different than the tone that Trump has. Right. But that's, that's not even a low bar. That's like, I mean, I didn't, I personally, it is so different than what made Nishobi County famous was the three civil rights workers in Nishwano, Cheney, and Goodman were buried in Nishobi County. Though everyone from Nishobi County will point out that the people who did it were not from Nishobi County. I don't know. I didn't, I didn't see that as being the dog whistle that it, that it often is. I mean, would you look at Clinton Gore when they ran as a different kind of, a different kind of Democrat. Super predators and there was dog whistles on both sides. Different kind of Democrat turned out to be like, you know, you were for the death penalty, you were going to end welfare. Right. I mean, they campaigned with Confederate flags. I don't know. These things are never perfect. They're never one thing or the other. And I think degree matters a lot. I'm sorry. I just want to hear from the three of you. I mean, Abe Lincoln is my favorite president ever. And so for me, I hold out, I'm an optimist. I hold out hope in the fact that we are not this racist party and we are able to kind of come out of this. This was a temporary glitch for us. And I think that the way, I know the I think it changes is by electing more women to office, because I think if we start electing more women to office and kind of generationally push out some of the older members of Congress, bring in more women, the conversation changes. And we can actually, the only way the Republican Party is going to change if we're starting to appeal to women and minorities. And we're not doing a great job of it right now. Is the Republican Party racist? I mean, I think the question is about the Southern strategy. This is where we've led. Right. No, but some of the people in it are enough to elect Donald Trump who is clearly racist. Hi, Rowan Jacobson. I'm a night fellow at MIT and a fellow of Vermont. So you just mentioned the rock kind of half jokingly. And I think that kind of begs the question that whenever Donald Trump exits the stage, do things go back to normal, like normal politics, or are we about to enter some brand new thing that we can't even really predict what it's going to be yet? Like, do career politicians have a future running for president? You know, I certainly hope so. I think that Trump has demonstrated, you know, one of the problems with the Trump administration from the get-go is, you know, it's a amateur hour over there, right? You know, there's a dearth of professional expertise, and that's that turns out to be really important. You know, you can't have your son-in-law just have the back channel embassy communications with the Soviets, right? So, you know, it doesn't go back to, you know, how it was before. Well, you know, I think it will. I think celebrity lends an advantage to someone who is thinking of running for office, you know, that I'd be curious what Stuart has to say about that. Yeah, I mean, and I'll just weigh in when Oprah, when it was rumored that Oprah was going to run, what I was hearing from Democrats that I work with was, oh, God, I hope not. Well, we see what having a celebrity being in office does. Not that Oprah's not a wonderful woman who has had a great career, but just, I think that we need to go back to governors and senators running for president. People who run things. Yeah, people that actually know. I mean, you know, whether you like Mike Pence or you don't like Mike Pence, he's been a member of Congress and he's been a governor. So, you know, he actually understands policy and politics. And I think that that's, he's one of the very few people that's in there that actually gets it. Okay. Yeah, good question. Hi, I'm Roger Wilson and I'm a Republican. And I think Dan's really onto something on the honor culture. My son was in the military and served in Iraq. And I identify with what he's saying. But David Brooks had a column recently saying that you guys are the never Trump folks have to address the grievances or interests that are, that the Trump voter has in order to, to defeat Trump. And I would say honor, the honor culture, that's an interest. It's a way people see their own self interest is their values. But there's also a whole set of more substantive, I think grievances that a lot of people had when I attended the caucus in Massachusetts was when I thought Trump would potentially win. And that was in the spring. And the Trump people were the most normal people in the room in the Republican caucus. They were like Patriots fans, you know, successful plumbers, etc. And the guy leading the fight and they were very well organized. The guy leading the fight was a ex military guy had everybody organized perfectly. They got all the delegates, not only for, for the Trump vote, but they voted Trump people into all the other allocated delegates. So they, they were really well organized. And that was in Massachusetts. So I wonder what do you agree with David Brooks? Do you have some ideas about beyond the honor interest? What other interests are not being served by the establishment that you would respond to and appeal to the Trump voter? Well, I mean, one of the ironies when you talk about Trump, I think Trump is, is very much an establishment. There's nothing more establishment than inherited wealth. Yeah. And here's a guy who's inherited wealth and lives on the avenue. And it's why I don't think Trump really is a populist. I, I think that you can get those voters without the darkness that Trump brings. I mean, certainly when Bill Well ran in Massachusetts, we got those voters. And when Saluchi ran, I guess when Mitt ran, I didn't work on it. Yeah. So I think that there is a way to speak to them that isn't about grievance, but about aspiration. And I think that it's an obligation in a civil society to try to appeal to that, which makes us better, not what need you need to do to win. Now, I say that as someone who's just been focused on winning for a lot of years and a lot of races. But I don't think if you ask those people, are you, do you like what Trump said about women? I don't think a single, very few of them would at least admit it. I don't think they do. They're like decent, good people. And that's the danger of electing someone like Trump because it begins to, to use a word that's used a lot, normalize it. And I think these intangibles are very important. I think it's very important to have role models that you can look at. And I disagreed with Barack Obama and a lot of policy stuff. I worked against him, but I think he's a very admirable person. I think he is. And you can look at Barack Obama and feel better about America and feel important to him as someone you might disagree with. But this is a good and decent family. And I think that those little things are really important. And I don't, you look at candidates across the country and governors are particularly good. No one's, I don't, very few people are running like Donald Trump. And I think that's telling. It's, and when people like Donald Trump run and they, they run, they tend to lose. So he won. Yeah. But they're not a lot of them. And I think that that's telling. So I think the fact that Trump did win and does represent this darkness is not definitive that that is the way to go to win. My name's Doug. I coach here at MIT, full disclosure. I'm a registered Democrat. Just a quick question. I tend to be long-winded. I'm going to try to be as succinct as I possibly can. But before I even say anything, just curious, what does the panel feel about what happened with the Supreme Court pick? I don't mean who was picked. I mean, What, what are you referring to when Obama was No, when the Senate refused to bring it to the floor. Right. When Obama was president, correct. I'm just curious, how did you guys feel about that? Me personally, it seemed like kind of a violation of the, the spirit of the, of the thing. I mean, I think the, you know, what makes us all Americans or what should make us all Americans and part of the problem with the whole Trump thing is, you know, our loyalty should be to the rules of the game. You know, when you're a military officer, you take an oath to the Constitution. Right. So, you know, you have to, you have to conduct yourself and accept the results. You know, you have to, you know, the chips fall where we're, you know, and you play your hand. So to me, I think it was kind of a low blow if you want to use that term or what have you. Yeah. You know, it's unfortunate politics, right? I mean, it's politics is a blood sport. And I get a history degree. I've worked on the Marist Bowl. I know a lot about politics. Yeah. No, I'm not, I'm not one other U.S. president where anything like that has ever happened. Yeah. No, I mean, look, the Senate was in control. They were able to do what they wanted to do, right? And they decided that that was whether it was right or wrong. I don't agree with what they did. I think it was, you know, he had, he still had the right to make his nomination. And it should have been, it should have gone, you know, gone through and Trump is going to have plenty of time to nominate other Supreme Court justices. Did you say at the time that you didn't agree with it? I don't know if I was ever asked publicly about it. But you didn't say anything publicly. You didn't say you disagreed with it? I mean, I don't know if my opinion doesn't matter. I mean, here in Massachusetts, but I mean, I don't know if I said whether I did or not. I mean, you know, and sometimes you look at it and say, well, it should be up to the next person. But did it happen to Bush? It happened. The closest is the 1800s. There was a similar situation with Congress. No, but wasn't there, was there an opening? Not on the court. Another person. Okay. The closest is when Joe Biden famously said after that. That was also in October, November. I disagree with Joe Biden, frankly. Right. And I think that was the one thing that I had said was, well, Biden said it. So I mean, you know, if Biden said it, then Biden's now vice president. And so what's good for the goose, good for the gander. But really, proceed, proceed. Procedurally, it should have been that at least, you know, he went through. I guess the reason why I asked that, because I think it speaks to some of the problems that we're having in the whole system is that, you know, I guess because I studied in college, I kind of intimately know what was in the minds of the framers of our Constitution more than most. And we're very lucky because I don't think it would ever happen again, frankly. But I think part of this whole, when it comes to politics and the way society's moving is you have to accept, okay, society's moving in this direction. And this is how it goes. But anyways, I was just curious. Because it speaks to my next point. A big constitutionalist, and I think of it as, it's a separation of powers, right? So the president could make his recommendation, the Senate is a separate branch, right? So they can do whatever they want with the judiciary, you know, and the judiciary is separate. So realistically, I mean, if they decide that they don't want, if they want to punt it for however long they want to punt it for, it doesn't look good. It doesn't smell good. It's also not what was intended. I mean, that's just not, that's not how it was supposed to work. Anyways, it leaves me kind of my point because I think part of the issue, and Jennifer, you mentioned term limits. I personally, I think, you know, that that's a possible solution or part of the solution. But I think the biggest issue is the never-ending campaign cycle. The fact that we're talking about 2020, not just now, but we've been talking it since before the election was even over. And the lobbyist and the money in the campaigns, it's just detrimental to the entire practice. So I guess my question to the panel is also, because you all nodded your heads, and you seem to agree with what I just said, how do we get away from that? Because I think that is killing us. And frankly, one thing that I thought about this election is, I thought whoever won this election is going to lose the next one. We're overdue for an economic crash, et cetera. Who knows? But just the fact that we're all talking about 2020, who cares about 2020? I mean, yeah, let's look down the road and let's focus on what our problems are now, and that's what we need to focus on because otherwise it's not going to work. So I'll step away from the mic here because I've been talking too long. But another question I guess there's going to have, and one of the reasons why I came to this forum, is I'm glad to see people, Republicans who are not happy with what's going on with the presidency. A lot of the Republicans I talk to just keep on supporting Trump no matter what, which is extremely frustrating. And they keep on saying, well, it's better than Hillary. It's like I don't care who won the election. Let's just pay attention to what's happening now. Don't just because you're not happy or just because it's okay to say you're not happy with what's going on in your vote of that person. That's okay. You know, let's let's try to fix what's going on because I think more of us, if we admitted to ourselves, we might be able to do something about it. But I guess, so that's my question is, what are you guys going to do? You guys have the keys to everything. You're a control of everything. I mean, I mean, control of everything when I say they are talking about the Republican GOP Republicans. And one thing as much as his politics actually frighten me more in his policies and fiscal policies and his political views, I would much rather have Mike Pence in there and impeach this president because I don't think he's going to get us in the nuclear war. And he does have some sort of understanding of the process and understands that, you know, you can't just be firing off Twitter, you know, things. So I guess my question to you guys that I leave is, what are we going to do about it? Because this is a real problem. I would support federal funding for all federal elections. I've really become radicalized on this. You know, there seems to be about 10 of us in the country, so it's not looking good. And campaign finance is one of these things. If you think about it for five minutes, it seems easy. And if you think about for 15, it seems impossible. Because there's a lot of arguments on both sides and a lot of laws of unintended consequences. But I've worked in a lot of other countries and looked at different systems. And I would go to a federal funding for all federal elections with limits. And I go back to term limits because if you limit the U.S. Senate to two terms, that's 12 years. In term number two, they stop going out with the lobbyists. They stop, you know, being whined and dying. They don't need to do the fundraising. They don't need the special interest. So I think that term limits solves a lot of it. Plus you get turnover, getting new ideas is always good. Again, you know, any company, even a university, someone's tenured, someone else comes in. If you're in a company, someone's an associate moves up the ladder. And that's really healthy and good to continuously have new blood come in, which we don't have unless there are vacancies or someone is actually beatable. Yeah, well, you know, so you run again, you know, 12 years later or eight years later. But I mean, I think that actually it regenerates itself a lot by being able to do that. Tom. Hi, I'm Tom Levinson. I'm a professor here. I am a yellow dog Democrat. And first thing is I want to say thank you to the panel, because even though I think I disagree on almost everything that the Republicans have attempted to do and are doing over many years, I think there's plenty of empirical evidence that almost all the policy choices are bad. You know, A, we need two parties functioning and B, it's not easy being a Republican opposing not just the president, but the entire leadership apparatus. And we need all hands on deck if this, you know, it's not just a dark moment for the Republican Party, it's a dark moment for the country. And I'm very glad you're doing what you're doing here and in your other work. But I mean, perhaps it's because I'm a yellow dog Democrat. It seems like the pathology of the Republican Party has been something that, you know, it's not just that the the issue of race was became a problem in 68. You know, the sort of, you know, the effect that the same, you know, it's like a habituation to a drug, you know, sort of dog whistling in 68 becomes, you know, bow-legged Mexicans with water, you know, etc. It's all the horrible things that, you know, King of Iowa and others have been saying and Trump has amplified. You know, and on and on through a number of the issues that the Republicans have, the Republican official party, the platform, a large number of candidates have signed on to, has been a real, you know, that's been growing and growing and growing. And frankly, the talent in the party. I mean, you talk about the Democrats having nobody to run. You know, that that gang of 16 wasn't exactly enormously impressive, I have to say. And you have people, you know, you've had during the Obama years, you had people being rewarded for both awful and obtuse things like the Benghazi nonsense and so on and so forth. So I got to ask you, I know it's really hard to leave a childhood faith, as it were, but you haven't convinced, you haven't been convincing tonight that the Republican Party is either saving or worth, is saveable or worth saving. And I guess I want to ask you is how seriously you've considered, you know, whether or not the Republicans are now where the pre-war Democrats were in 1858-1959 and whether something else has to be done? Well, if Donald Trump is a Republican Party, it's not a party that I would be drawn to. I think it's up to voters to decide what the Republican Party is going to be. I think this talent question that you, the point that you made, I think is a very good one. And if the Republican Party becomes a party that is the anti-science party, that is the white grievance party, that is a party that isn't for aspirational education, and we have a resentment toward those who are educated and that is sort of aspiring to be better educated. You're basically against the future because, and the future ultimately doesn't care what you think, it's going to happen. And, you know, if you're against the future, at some point you're going to lose and you're not going to become relevant. And I think that's the essential point, question for the party. What is its relevance? And you turn on Fox and you get a sense that maybe Hillary Clinton's going to lose the election. It's not really relevant to anything that is about the future. And that's what the party has to decide. I mean, the party at its heyday was founded, not founded, but in the modern party at its heyday, if you look at Reagan in 144 states, you know, what did that party stand for? In many ways, the party, you could argue, some have articulated very eloquently that the party is a victim of its own success, that it was the crime is down, it was a law and order party, it was an anti-soviet union party, stand up to them, there's no more Soviet union. It was a party that felt that welfare had gone to an extreme and welfare certainly, thanks to Bill Clinton, has changed. And there are a lot of those issues that you won. So then what else are you going to, that's the great challenge. What are you going to be for? I know in 2000 in the Bush campaign, really the only thing that we did that worked, I mean, I'm talking about sitting there watching numbers, was restoring honor dignity to the White House. We put tax stuff up there, it didn't move a thing. And it was about this question of character. And I think that that's really what the party has to decide, what it wants to be. And we always say that you have to stand for something other than election. And now you have to sort of see if you really believe that. So I became a Republican to the dismay of my retired bus driver union grandfather and my seamstress union grandmother, who we lived with, they were horrified. And it was because I worked my butt off and I saw kids around me getting handouts and I was pissed, because my dad died and I got nothing and I didn't have a parent. And for me, it was, being a Republican was all about hard work. It was all about if you work hard, you get rewarded, it was about limited government and people staying out of your business. And I'm inherently a 16-year-old girl that doesn't want anyone to tell me what to do, so don't tell me what to do with my money, don't tell me what to do with my body, just leave me alone and go on your merry way. And so I won, I'm a Republican, I won't change that regardless of who the president is and how much I disagree with them. What I will do is teach my kids and my kids' friends about what the party actually stands for, is supposed to stand for, and to fight to get it back. And I think that one of the challenges is to make sure that people fight for what they believe in and really believe in and stop laying down and let people run over us with their own beliefs. And so what's happening right now is a lot of us feel like we were mowed down and I just keep saying, well, it's like whack-a-mole, like hit me down, come back up, hit me down, come back, I really don't care, I'm going to still be here as a thorn in your side. But I don't, I'm not a Democrat, I don't believe in the principles, so I'm not going to change over to the left. But I think that our party needs to get back to what we believe in, the tax, what just happened and the deficit and the budget that went through. I mean, it's like you want to vomit. We're leaving my kids and grandkids, all of our kids and grandkids, with such enormous debt that how do you even get out of it? None of us would have a credit card bill laying around like that. How do we leave that for our kids? So anyway. I appreciate what you say about being a Republican forever and not agreeing, not becoming a Democrat. But I didn't ask you if you would become a Democrat. I'd ask you if the Republican Party, as it is, not as you wish it to be, but as it is, so it completely fails to represent what you believe in and what you aspire to, what do you do about that? It's not become a Democrat. If I, if I, but suppose, I mean, Trump gets re-elected and, you know, in the tax bill, I have said the most recent tax bill is, is, is egregious but consistent with several iterations of Republican tax bills. This isn't a new thing. So it, you know, so I, I, I, I mean, it seems to me like, you know, you are the counterpart to, to the true yellow dog Democrats who would vote for him. I was joking when I called myself that. I actually voted for Bill Weld's first election. Bill Weld carried Cambridge. Was it? Weld carried Cambridge in 90. I remember that. People's Republic of Cambridge. That was a quality of disappointment, I have to say. That always, that always helps. But I'm really a little perplexed. So, so again, I think the only way it comes back, Donald Trump is completely generationally different than I am, right? I'm going to be here a lot longer than he is. And so, hope to God. And, and I, I created three other beings like myself that are generationally, substantially different than me. So, you know, my feeling is if each of us can affect one other life and change one other life to go out there and fight for what we believe in, then the world can be a better place. And so my belief is, if I can take out all of the elderly white racist males and, and, and, and, and replace them with, you know, women, younger women who actually have an idea of what goes on in the world and what's needed, we're going to change the party over and over. It's not, it's not stuck. I don't believe it's stuck. Donald Trump is only a temporary little glitch on the radar screen. He's out, and then there's another generation that will, by the time he's out, be so pissed off that they're going to motivate and change what the party looks like. That's my hope. I was going to say, preface my answer with I'm not a Republican, but I'm not a Democrat either, but the, you know, I think the Republican party looking at it from the outside, it's a conservative party. And if you want to sort of rebrand Republicanism, you know, you need to get back to the, back to the basics. I mean, there's plenty about America that is should be conserved. There's plenty that's great about our country that should be conserved. You know, the thing that's always, one thing that's always baffled me about, you know, kind of how the political parties align themselves. I mean, you know, for example, the environment, you know, a conservative should want to conserve the environment. You know, things like that, you know, there's plenty that is good and wonderful about America. And I believe that. And I think most of the people in this room probably believe that too. And, you know, and conserving what is good is how the Republican party gets back to business. Yeah. Great. Thanks. I'm not here to beat up on you. But actually, I'm going to ask you to elaborate on kind of some of these earlier points. My name is Earl Wagner. I am an MIT of alum. Now I'm working in California in technology. And that kind of gives rise to some, like some of the perspective that I was bring or I do bring. You know, during the 2016 election, there was a lot of talk about coal miners and, you know, coal jobs. And meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, we're saying like, well, what about the 20 to 30 million jobs that are going to disappear from like self-driving trucks? You know, just seeing yesterday that in terms of party affiliate or party, I guess, affiliation, looking at the breakdown, looking at millennials, in particular, millennial women, there's a 47% difference. So you're talking about 75% to 25% in terms of party affiliation. So I'm really curious, building on the last question, you know, I heard Stuart you mentioning some of the core values around individual responsibility, individual freedom. Jennifer, you're mentioning like hard work and being able to see the sort of results of your hard work. And then Daniel, like talking about, you know, communities where there's a real focus on honor. I'm curious, like, what are you seeing like, like policies? Or are you seeing like how, like, what kind of messages do you think would appeal to, like, would really speak to, you know, the techies in California, the millennials who are looking at, you know, who just take for granted, you know, gay marriage, take for granted, like, you know, legal marijuana, take for granted, you know, working, interacting with folks who may not be documented? Like, what do you see as a kind of, how do you see that these ideals might be embodied in messages that kind of resonate for these folks? So your specific, go ahead. No, I'm just going to say, I mean, this whole, I am absolutely baffled by this beating up of California that Trump is in. I mean, California, first of all, you know, if you take a state like Mississippi, we had four tax dollars back for every one we give. So without California, Mississippi would sort of blow away. And it's the single most successful state, out of doubt. I mean, it's huge, it's problematic, but I mean, it is, and has long embodied sort of the future of America. And I can just go back to that, you have to embrace this. And people that work in these diverse communities, as you know, well, are not frightened by this. This idea, for the most part, there's always exceptions. It's, it's this otherness, the sphere of the unknown, the sphere of the future that I think that the Republican Party has to get away from. Any party does, if it's going to exist. I'm not as optimistic, personally, I'd like to be, but I'm not as optimistic because I don't necessarily see the path clearly forward. But I'm wrong a lot. You see the path forward for the country or for the party? No, for the party. I mean, I just look at the numbers. So Trump is a 20% favorable among under 30s. If Trump is president, you know, since those six years. And then it's not just going to be, if even if Trump lost in 2020 to a Democrat, the Trump element of the party is going to be there to deal with. And I think it's, it's, it's very troubling. And I'm all for fighting and I love to fight. And I fight a lot. But I'm very sober about the prospects of it. I mean, I almost want to offer reassurance. I mean, the values that all three of you articulate, I think are really powerful and really compelling. And it's, I mean, you know, you mentioning individual freedom, individual responsibility. For me, it's just this kind of curiosity about what them I look like, you know, in political messages 10 or 20 years down the road. That's a really good question. I think generationally it changes. I mean, I just think that once Trump is gone, he surrounded himself by men that wanted to retire. And this was the last hurrah in their careers. As we see, they're being shuffled out, you know, daily. And I think that by the time he's done, he's going to have gone through all of them. And it's just going to be, there's not going to be any other, you know, billionaire, white, you know, 78 year old to be hanging out in the cabinet anymore. And I think that, you know, we are again, it's going to be a turnover. And you see by the numbers of women, historical numbers of women are running in 2018 for seats, whether they win or lose, it doesn't matter. Women are now mobilized. And women do see that there's a need to start getting involved. And I think that that's how it changes. Because, you know, I always laugh, like, my recycling is like the neatest recycling in the entire world. I rinse everything. My kids are nuts about it. We take care of everything, right? And I laugh when, you know, people say that there's no climate change in the party. And then it's February. And I'm walking around in flip flops, because it's 70 degrees on a random day in New England. And so I think that it's just going to take a new generation to come up there. I mean, and that's maybe like, I'm 46. So for me, you know, I laugh, I'm young in my business until I'm 60. So I feel like there's still plenty of time for people like myself and younger to make changes in the party going forward and have real appreciation for technology. When he was talking about coal miners, like, my great grandfather worked in a coal mine. That's antiquated. Going forward is what your business and what you're up to. I agree with all that. Yeah. Hi, my name is David Wu. I'm an undergrad at MIT. So Jennifer, like you, I think that the way things are going, Trump's going to win again. And I'd really not like to have six more years of that. So the only way that I see that happening is moderates from both sides come together and agree on some fundamental principles about what we want in our government. And I can understand how like college educated voters also voted for Trump. And I understand that in 2016. And I think the goal should be to try to convince them not to vote again the next time around. And I think that you've used sexist a lot and you've thrown out and I totally agree with you. His comments despicable, like unacceptable. But I think in terms of a unifying way of convincing moderate Republicans to go away from Trump, that these attacks on Donald Trump's character are not the most effective way because then you're implying that voters who voted for Trump also share some of these characteristics. And I definitely know that's not true. I have friends and parents of friends who voted for Donald Trump and I will speak to their character. And it's not true. And I think it's almost harmful if we just use these emotional appeals all the time. Like the undermining of the justice system. And we're supposed to have separation of powers. If you believe in the American government system, we're supposed to have separation of powers. And the constant undermining of the judicial system, the constant undermining of the freedom of the press, is a huge, too huge fundamental issues that I think everyone, if you believe in the American government system, can support this fake news. You don't need to believe the news. You can read multiple news sources. So this fake news nonsense has been just like, I don't understand it all. Just read multiple sources if you want a whole picture on something. So do you think if you just stick to these principles of separation of powers, believing the Constitution and the freedom of the press, these tariffs and these trade wars I don't think have ever helped the consumer, the economy, and the history of America. Do you think if you just stick to those three principles, it's enough to get moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats to side together? Or now in the social media age is where everything's in a tweet and everything's in a 10 second video clip. Do you think that message will get lost? And there's no, honestly, no hope. So I'm just going to start because I think he's a sexist. I don't think that that's a winning message. I think he's a sexist. I agree with you. And in full disclosure, my mother, not only did she vote for Donald Trump, which was like, oh God, not only did she vote for him, that's fine that she voted for him. But she is like, I can't talk to her. If I disagree with one thing that, so my problem with her voting for him was not that she voted for Trump, because I have lots of friends that voted for him. It was, it's her adamancy about, you know, well, Mom, you have granddaughters, would you want him to talk about them like that? Mom, you were a single woman, you worked in a business with lots of men, you were, men came on to you. It's like, none of that actually even matters to her. And she just, she loves Donald Trump. So I mean, the sexism thing is my own hang up about him. But I think that there are, there are people on both sides of the aisle that would really like to see they didn't like Bernie Sanders and they didn't like any of the Republicans. And there has to be a more moderate message. The problem is the primary system. The primary system pulls everyone to the right and everyone to the left. And then they lose. I mean, that was one of the problems with Hillary was that because she was going against Bernie, she got pulled so far to the left that it was very difficult for her to find where she was always playing kind of in the middle. And so we need a message like that. I mean, I think what's going on now with the tariffs and the trade war, once that starts hurting Middle America, that will define a message really quickly. Hi, Ed Birchinger, faculty member here. I have a question about the possibility for depolarization. There's been a lot of discussion around values and the hope that perhaps values can be that there exists perhaps a political or cross political cross party values that might bring people together. And of course, I remember a time 20 years ago, 40 years ago when comedy was celebrated practice, certainly at least within the Senate. And we did have a primary system back then. One thing I've observed is that a lot of people on the left reacting to Trump are doing so in a values framework, particularly young people. Is there a prospect for people to come together with with concepts of basic values? And you've enumerated a great set that I think would cross the political spectrum for diminishing some of this extreme polarization that we have and bringing us back to a little bit of cross party comedy. Then I think this is a lot of what you're about. Yeah, you know, I think, excuse me, I think, you know, the common experience, the entire idea of the organization that we've started was that common experience is going to trump sort of different, pardon the pun, the differences. So what I think about veterans and veterans coming home is we all have this shared experience of serving in the military. Not everyone, not all veterans have been in combat, but we all at least have that shared experience of having been sort of having these values inculcated into us and the importance of a team. And the team is more important than self. There are other things like that. It's the commonalities that I think need to sort of be emphasized. And I think that that is possible. I mean, I think young people have a lot more in common with each other, whether they're on the left or the right, than they do with their grandparents. You know, and I think that, you know, some of the generational factors are gonna work there. So yes, I do think there's a way for, but like all of these things, it takes work. You know, this is, you know, someone needs to stand up and, you know, reach across the island, be the first one to do it, and then be the second one to do it, and then be the third one to do it. And that is not happening right now. I think we have time for one more question, Bradley. Thank you. My name is Cecilia Biaran. I'm a visiting fellow at MIT from Norway, representing a small group of Norwegian men here. So we find this very interesting because, well, Trump is also kind of a president for us because the U.S. is our big brother in many ways. And I think it was quite a shock when we woke up in the morning and found out that what seemed to be impossible actually happened. And it has changed also the way politics is done in Norway and the view we have from the world. And this is more a question to all three of you because I do realize that probably foreign policy is not the most important concern for in politics in the U.S. But on the other hand, we are used for the president of the U.S. to be a stabilizing factor also for us. What we see now is that it's the total opposite. And I was living in a time where we were squeezed between the Soviet Union and the U.S. and we were afraid of nuclear wars. And you are probably the same that we learned how to protect ourselves, how to get down on the floor and whatever to protect ourselves for nuclear weapons. But what we see now is that the new generation actually is starting to get afraid of exactly the same things that we thought were gone for so many years. So is this an issue in the U.S. or could it be an issue? And will it have any impact or could it have any impact in the next election? Well, statistically foreign policy, right, is not a big election. You know, before in 2012, when I was running for the Romney campaign, there was three debates between Obama and Romney. And the third was supposed to focus on foreign policy, did focus on foreign policy. So we just did a poll before how many people are interested in foreign policy because they seem sort of irrelevant. And in only 7 percent thought it was one of their top 10 issues. In a way, you can argue that's positive and that when we tend to be involved in foreign policy is when we're fighting a war. Certainly in Vietnam, those numbers would have been very different. And I think at the beginning of the Iraq invasion, certainly it would have been different. But I think one of the great disasters of Trump is his failure to understand or appreciate the need for stability in the world and the U.S. central role in that. And that we've, the whole post-war alliance that we have built that has kept peace for the most part, I think is in jeopardy. And it is, you can put all of this stuff together and that could very well be the most troubling and lasting legacy of Trump. And I don't see him, he has an extraordinary inability to learn. And most presidents get better. But he's not. And that doesn't bode well. Before we end, one, I guess I'll reserve my right as moderator to ask one final question. Before he signed the Civil Rights Act, LBJ famously said that he was going to lose this out for Democrats for generations to come, which in many ways ended up being true. Do you think it is necessary for a Republican leader to make a similar type of principled stand where they say that short-term political calculus is going to be against this, but I'm going to do this for the identity of the party? And a corollary to that question is, what would that stand be? Well, I think in many ways this is what Mitt Romney did when he gave the speech about Donald Trump. There's certainly nothing in it for him. And I have been surprised and saddened that more of that hasn't happened. I think it's a great failure of this moment. And I think we'll look back on it and ask that same question why it didn't, because I think it'll seem very obvious. It'll seem very obvious that it should have happened? It should have happened. I don't have a good answer for that. I don't know. I don't know if it'll be forced by a crisis. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think that you saw Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, John McCain. I mean, to me, they're heroes. They stood up when no one else was standing up to say this is wrong and we're not agreeing. Healthcare or Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Grassley, the whole on Mueller. I think also it's going to take some kind of unfortunate tragedy for anyone else to find the nerve to stand up. And it's really concerning because I was married on September 8th of 2001. I was one of the 30 flights in the air on September 11th. I couldn't land because we were over the Pacific Ocean. So I landed on my honeymoon, finding out that New York was never going to be the same. I grew up in New York. 78 people from my hometown died that day. Tons of our friends were in the Trade Center. Friends of mine were pregnant, jumping on the back of garbage trucks to get out of town. So that is an actual, serious, real, real feeling that I have and concern that I have that raising kids in this crazy world, what happens? And so I think that that's when people stand up and finally realize and get out of their bubbles. But I commend our leaders who have been out there in the forefront saying that stuff shouldn't happen because it takes a lot for them and they take a lot of blow back for it. I think yes. But someone needs to stand up. But I don't think that a politician, I don't think there's a politician in the Republican Party who can challenge a sitting president and just flip the switch like that. I think it has to be another public figure. And there are plenty of folks that, the average Republican voter, I think trusts more than Donald Trump. When Billy Graham gets up and says it, or I guess he won't anymore, but someone like that says it. There was this tipping point in Vietnam where Walter Cronkite said, I'm not sure we can win this anymore. That's the moment that needs to happen. And that was a news anchor. That was not a politician. I'm just not sure. Johnson said if we lost Cronkite, if we lost Cronkite, we lost the country. So I think that when Fox and Friends say that that's the moment that needs to happen. I think it's a scary thought to leave us on that we're looking at Fox and Friends to be the moral strength. Well, thank you, you three so much for coming out. This was a really rewarding conversation. Thank you all for coming out also. I'm sorry if we didn't get a chance to ask your questions. As I said, this will be up online in a couple of days. And hopefully we can continue the conversation. Thank you.