 Okay, we're back, we're live, 11 o'clock, rock, and so exciting we have Colin Moore, assistant professor of political science, am I right? Associate professor. Associate professor, okay. That's okay, Jay. Okay, never, I always go the wrong way, okay, and he's also the director of the Public Policy Center in UH Minoa, so it's great to have him on the show. Pleasure to be here. Especially now. I know, what a bizarre election season we've had. I mean, like I was saying to you before the show started, but really, we're really in uncharted territory at this point. I'm teaching an elections class this semester, and every once in a while I have to confess to my students, I really don't know what's going on because we've never seen anything like this before. Yeah. We all went to school, we learned civics and social studies, we learned western civilization, philosophy, government, all that stuff, and this is beyond any of that. There's no precedent for this. It absolutely is. To have a candidate like Trump, whatever you think about him, become the nominee of a major political party, we've never seen anything like this before. I mean, someone who's never run for political office, who really is a demagogue, to have seen such electoral success is just, I mean, shocking. He can't win, right? He can't win. I mean, he could have won potentially if he was a more disciplined candidate. If he had followed his PR advisors a bit more religiously, I mean, that's sort of the irony of it to some extent, is that Trump's failures are because he was trying to be more authentic, or at least the way he thought he was trying to be authentic, and they couldn't control the actual Trump. But he could have won. Now I think it's extremely unlikely after the tape came out and all of the other revelations. Not enough, but then he was so bad in that last debate on Sunday night, and then the women after the debate, when bringing those other women down with him was so tacky, and then of course, threatening to put her in jail, that was tacky too. It was. I mean, that moment where, I mean, not only did he just double down on this strategy of trying to bring Hillary Clinton into his own mess, but that moment when he said, if I was in president, you'd be in jail, we haven't ever seen anything like that in American politics. I mean, a cornerstone of democracy is that the opposition is legitimate, and every once in a while, any candidates even gotten close to saying something like that. They've usually backed off very quickly. I mean, there's that famous exchange with John McCain and a woman in one of his audiences where she says, you know, we're scared of this man. He's a Muslim, he's a terrorist, and you can see this moment where McCain is shocked and he says, no, ma'am, he's a good man. We just disagree on family issues, but Trump, Trump is willing to go there. Yeah, and he doesn't back down on anything. No. And after the New York Times wrote this really authoritative article about the women who came out against him, he denied it all, called it all a conspiracy, and this is the part I want to ask you about, Colin. Millions of people agree with it. They agree it's a conspiracy. This is what's so disturbing. I mean, not only is it that no matter what Trump does, he seems to have a floor of support that's about 35% of the electorate, but also that people do believe this, that we've sold them this line about government and how it's corrupt all the way through, and they should be trying to tear it down and destroy it, and everybody somehow is on the take. I mean, in truth, it's not true. People have been lied to for political reasons, and I think the Republican Party, I mean, these chickens have come home to roost. They've had a lot of electoral success by telling people that politicians are corrupt and you should throw the bums out and you shouldn't trust government. And it turns out people were listening, and they're not so pleased about that right now because they don't trust anyone, including the Republican establishment. Yeah, other Republican Party. Can they recover? Well, so this is what's going to be so fascinating. If Trump wins, actually that will probably be more difficult for the Republican Party to recover from because they'll be hopelessly divided into these factions. I think in the likely event that he loses, what's going to happen is there's going to be this fight. There's going to be people who say we need to stay the course. The only reason we lost this election was because Trump was such a terrible candidate. And the other people who've been saying for a decade now, we need to reform the party. We need to become a party that minority voters can support. I mean, there's a lot of reasons to think they could get that sort of support, but they can't keep doubling down on this dog whistle, quasi-racist strategy that they've been using. It reveals something, though. It reveals the disenchantment at almost a tipping point level. I mean, I wanted to ask you, where is the tipping point? Where do we lose it? Where does the democracy in jeopardy? At what point? This is a question I've been asking myself a lot over the last few months. I mean, at what point do you elect someone who truly doesn't believe in democracy? At what point do people just entirely lose faith? I think we're getting there. I don't know when the tipping point happens, but the system can't take much more... The lack of trust, if it continues, the system isn't built for that. I mean, in part because American democracy is set up to encourage conflict and discussion and debate. But to do that... You also have to believe that your opponents are legitimate, that they have the right to disagree with you. And you fight and you say mean things to each other on TV, but at the end of the day you realize that it's in my own self-interest to work with you to get something done. I have to. The system is set up that way. If I just think you're illegitimate, if you have no right to be there, I don't recognize the... I think you're corrupt or somehow part of some vast media conspiracy, then why would I compromise with you? Yeah, never. Never compromise with you. And if I lost in the conventional methodology, the courts, what have you, I would argue... I would continue to argue. I would never give in. That's right. And there's a disrespect for the system in general, if you take that position. I mean, isn't part of the system... Look, we have a mechanism for deciding these questions. And when the mechanism plays out, respect it. That's right. If you don't respect it, you're not respecting the system. That's right. That's the only way democracies work. And we have this precious thing that has worked for so long that we're in the process of destroying. I mean, it's why democracies are so hard to set up throughout the world. You can cut and paste from the U.S. Constitution and try to implement it. But if people don't have those values, if they don't honestly believe that the system is right and the opposition should be respected, you can't work. Somewhere out there that's a tipping point, and the question, the operative question I wanted to ask you is, are we now or will we be in a constitutional crisis? At what point will we be in a constitutional crisis? We'll be in a constitutional crisis if Donald Trump gets elected and tries to use the power of the presidency to destroy his opponent, the Clintons and others. I mean, to use the vast power of the American security establishment and the presidency to go after political opponents, to go after journalists. That's not an uncommon story in fragile, emerging democracies. But it's not something that's supposed to happen in the oldest mass democracy in the world. Yeah. He would be up to testing it too, wouldn't he? And I don't think we've fully realized how much an out-of-control president could do before anybody could stop him. So this is the thing. I mean, the Constitution, of course, was set up to try to prevent the election of a demagogue figure. And also, the presidency, constitutionally, originally, was supposed to be a relatively weaker office, more of a clerk in the service of the House and particularly the Senate. But over time, in the post-war era, we've seen the rise of the imperial presidency. And we've been fortunate in that most of the people who have been elected to that office have respected the power and respected the system. But the power of the office has grown dramatically. I mean, not only does the president have control over an intelligence and security apparatus that people 100 years ago could never even have imagined, but as the country has become more polarized, even domestically, things like signing statements, things like executive orders, have become more and more powerful. So that office itself has become more of a, you know, the president has become more of a king than he was ever supposed to be. And if you get someone who's really willing to push it even further, to use those powers to operate like a king, it'll be more difficult to push back on. It could become a petty dictatorship in no time before anybody can act to stop him. You know, he'd have so many powers, ways to get even. That's right. I mean, that is one of the fundamental and big advantages of the presidency is that the president can act quickly. He can just make an order. And it takes the courts. It takes the Congress months, sometimes years to respond. So you can do tremendous damage in a short period of time. So we find ourselves in a situation, ourselves collectively in a situation where, A, people coming out of school don't have the same education in civics and government as they used to. You agree with me? Yes. I mean, they don't teach civics in a lot of schools, a lot of states now. They don't. And for a while, Hawaii barely did. I mean, we tried to, the state tried to get rid of his entire social studies curriculum for a period. Not, but it didn't happen. But it didn't happen. Good, it didn't happen. Good. I mean, I think kids really need that if they're going to function as citizens. And the other thing is, you know, people do not participate. They don't see an obligation to participate. I just came back from Portugal and I said to the people, you know, do you vote? By the way, I asked them if they were going to vote for Trump or Clinton. It was a joke question, but they all answered me. Really? Because they see this election as a global election and they almost feel they can vote like everyone else. Right. Right. Did you get any Trump supporters in Portugal? Yes. And it was all based on Macho. Right. Right. He's Macho. I like him because he's strong. Yeah. But most people thought that he had some kind of mental illness. Anyway, if you don't vote in Portugal, they find you. I think it's a great solution. You pay money. I do too. They do it in Australia too. The fight is very modest. I mean, we can probably bracket this by saying it's almost certainly unconstitutional to have a law like that. But it's a good idea. And it's a good idea because it creates this expectation that you're going to vote just like you're going to pay your taxes. Even if the fine is very modest, everyone expects you to vote. And that's really what voting is. People who are, you know, who vote are always voters. People who never vote, almost, you know, they're just not voters. They never show up and do it. A lot of people. I went house to house for a candidate one time and I found a remarkable number of people saying, get away from me, don't knock on my door. I do not participate in this. I don't vote. I don't care. I don't want to talk to you. It's not my business. That's a really extraordinary kind of reaction on an ordinary number of people that way and an ordinary number of people in Hawaii don't vote, including Millennials who don't vote. And that's the scariest thing because that portends of new generations coming into the system in like fashion. That's right. It's a vicious cycle. If your parents vote, you're likely to be a voter. But if your parents don't, you're not. And so you have generations of children whose parents haven't voted, maybe their grandparents haven't voted, and they're not going to start the habit. Yeah. The other thing is, you know, we had a discussion about this the other day, do you want them to vote stupid? Because if they do really nothing to educate themselves, if they don't look at even what's left of our newspapers, if they're just dealing on social media or less, how much will they know in order to make an informed decision? How qualified are they to vote? They're objectified by the public relations people, and, you know, they don't have their own independent thinking going on. Well, the hope would be that if they're starting to vote, they'd take it a little more seriously and pay a little attention to the issues. But it's true. I mean, I think the other part of the problem is because of the rise of social media, I mean, because of partisan television and news sources, people only get their news from a single source, or they get their news only from sources that they already agree with. And so you really do end up living in this echo chamber, which I think to me is the most disturbing thing. I'm actually more scared by voters who, you know, are unwilling to consider any piece of evidence that doesn't accord with their previously held beliefs than voters who are simply ignorant and are quite sure where all these issues are. Yeah. One of the points in this article in The Washington Post this morning, comparing Michelle Obama's remarkable speech yesterday with Trump's response to say everyone was lying, was they said that Fox did not carry Michelle Obama's speech. Well, how do you like that? Fox News knows their audience, although I think the Fox network is struggling in this election because there's been some pretty serious clashes between Trump and some of the Fox executives, even though Roger Ailes is now consulting for the campaign. But this is shameful. I mean, yes, it works. The business model works. That's the troubling thing. You can become a wealthy television network by telling people what they want to hear and never challenging them. And as you said, fewer and fewer people control the media. So it's not like there's a lot of voices. There's a few voice, a few owners controlling how a lot of people think in the country. Yeah. And there's this extent to which some of these television stations and even newspapers to a degree haven't been responsible in the way the journalistic ethics has taught in this country for years. I mean, you shouldn't have commentators lying about things on television. You shouldn't allow political figures to get away with telling things that simply aren't true on your station because you're worried about offending the audience. That goes against what the profession is supposed to stand for. And fact-checking isn't what it used to be. In the debate on Sunday, one thing was remarkable to me is that Trump would make, they would ask a question to Trump and he wouldn't even get within a hundred yards of asking an entry. He didn't, you know, he didn't, not even a pretense of answering the question. He'd go darting here and there and the other. Okay. And they never, except maybe on one occasion, never called him on it. And I think that's part of being a moderator. Somebody doesn't answer your question. You have to say, at least say that he didn't answer your question. I think comparatively they tried their best in that case to force him to answer a few questions. But it's a very difficult thing to moderate a debate and if someone's lying to you, not just sort of telling half-truths, but simply lying, that's a much more difficult thing to deal with as a journalist because you don't really want to say to a major presidential candidate, you know, you're lying. Everything you're saying is untrue. So they're used to making, you know, nudging candidates in certain ways and expecting them to say, oh, well, that isn't quite what I meant. That doesn't happen. But if they just simply say, no, I'm right. You're wrong. And, you know, you're making it up. Yeah. Exactly. And we're going to go to a break in the same fashion. All right. Hello. I'm Mary Ann Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha. My name is Reg Baker, and I'm the host of Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts live every Thursday from two to two-thirty. We highlight success stories in Hawaii of both businesses and individuals. We learn their secrets to success, which is always valuable. I hope to see you on our next show. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to. But I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show Education Movers, Shakers, and Reformers here on Think Tech Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. We are so honored to have Colin Moore with us. He's an Associate Professor of Political Science at UH Manoa. He's also the Director of Public Policy Center there. We're so happy to have him with us to talk about politics nationally and in Hawaii. So the English word, surus, we have plenty of surus on the national level. Does that filter it into the local? It doesn't seem like it actually is. In some ways, how boring Hawaii politics is is somewhat refreshing right now. I mean, so yes, we have very few interesting races. Yes, the Democratic Party, the mainstream Democratic Party still seems to run the state and everything else. We don't have any problems with Republicans because we have no Republicans here. I mean, that's a separate problem, which is that we don't have the kind of vigorous electoral competition we should have. But it doesn't really seem to have affected us much here. People in Hawaii, we believe in government here. Yeah, that's true. What if you want to say Hawaii doesn't throw out the container? We believe in the system mostly. Yeah, we do. We're still a very progressive state. Big government has never gone out of fashion in Hawaii. I mean, that really dates to statehood and the extent to which the state was so instrumental in bringing a lot of people up out of poverty. So we're good. We're good new deal Democrats here. We may be the last. A couple of small things pop into my head just to ask you about. So what is happening with Colleen? Is there any resistance on her? Is she going to just sweep in? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the thing is that her Republican opponent, Shirley Nastrov, is actually a very good candidate. I mean, she's an retired Air Force colonel. She seems very articulate. You know, in most other Senate races, she would be a very competitive candidate. But here in Hawaii, I mean, in congressional races, but here in Hawaii in the first congressional district, there's just no hope. I mean, it's one of the most democratic districts in the country. So, yeah, Honobusa's just going to walk right in. And Brian Schatz, you won't even hear a sound there. He's just going to win, period. I think some people don't even realize he's a real reelection. So, yes, no, he doesn't. I mean, Schatz barely has any competition. Now, what about Rod Tam? He's running in the 26th District, and I think he's the only candidate for the State Senate, which is remarkable how, you know, in view of what happened to him last time around where it almost went to jail. What does that mean? What does this tell us? One thing I suggest to you, and might tell us, is that people don't want to run for office. I think that's it. They certainly don't want to run as Republicans, which is what Rod Tam is doing. I mean, he's going to get crushed by Karl Rhodes in the general election. But that's a really important point, actually, that the Star Advertiser did a story on this, and it was actually a representative, Bert Kobayashi, who did the analysis, who was pointing out that there are just very, very few competitive races this year. And there are very few new people, even potentially new people, who could enter the legislature. Only a single incumbent lost their seat in the primary. Interesting. Time for incumbents then. But is this connected somehow with the lack of interest we see by people who don't vote? What's the connection? I think there's a little bit of that. I mean, I think if we're likely to get a challenge in Hawaii, it's probably gonna be a progressive challenge from the left, not from a resurgent Republican party. You know, the Bernie progressives recently took over the Democratic Party here, but they really haven't been able to get a lot of progressive candidates to run. So I think it is in part a lack of interest. Part of it is, is that there really is only one party. So if you're a good candidate, I mean, if you're someone who really would be the sort of person a party would recruit, you're more likely to wait your turn, because it's so difficult to knock off an incumbent. I mean, think about, you know, think about Isaac Choi and Dale Kobayashi. Dale Kobayashi, this is in the Manoa district. Dale Kobayashi was a strong candidate. You know, a well-known banker, son of Anne Kobayashi, a well-financed campaign. He came within striking distance, but it just shows you how hard it is to take on an incumbent. Even a relatively unpopular one, like Isaac Choi. And then Isaac Choi will win. That's it. He's got it. Yeah, it's all finished. So what about the mayoral race? That is kind of a big deal now. And there's a lot of accusations hurled back and forth. But what do we have here? Is this the same thing as PRP the last time around? Right. So not entirely. I mean, PRP was unique because it really brought in, you know, hard ball mainland-style politics combined with data analysis that we haven't seen. But the interesting thing to me about the mayor's race is it's shifted from being about rail, which it was initially, and the last one was as well, to because, did you more or less conceded that we're gonna continue to build the rail? Now it's more of a referendum on Caldwell and his ethical challenges, you know. Problems he's had with HPD, certainly problems with Chuck Tato. And people accuse him of forcing the city ethics director to leave. You know, and recently the fact that he is receiving, you know, a quarter of a million dollars a year to sit on the board of territorial savings. So a lot of it is questions about Caldwell's ethics. The difference though is that Dijoux doesn't have the kind of campaign that PRP was able to run for Caldwell against Cayetano. You know, he has a few ads, but it's not the kind of relentless question of his ethics. Every day, and it's stuck, didn't it? It did stick. It did stick. And you know, that was, I mean, in some cases libelous. Yeah, yeah, well it was a lawsuit. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It went away, I think, ultimately, it was seven or something. They settled, yeah. But that was really bad election process. I hope we never see that again, yeah. Do we have PACS operating in this election, do you think? In Hawaii? Yeah. You know, that's the interesting thing. Not in a major way. PRP was the most famous one. We haven't seen anything on that level in this mayorals race. And I think it's because most of the big money folks think they're gonna get what they wanna get no matter what. There was a lot of money in rail. They contributed heavily to Caldwell's reelection campaign. But it looks like the rail's gonna be built no matter who wins. Well, yeah, they both say they build it. There's no need to invest that money. Yeah. Well, you know, it goes to the question of what unliquidated liabilities. Some people estimate it to be $40 billion. And it's like a noose, you know. And further we go down the track, the tide of the nooses. Exactly. How is this gonna play out in future elections? Because after a while, another tipping point. Yeah, it's gonna continue to be an issue. I mean, it's just gonna shift from, you know, questions not only about building the rail, but then supporting the rail. How are we going to continue to pay for its operational costs? But once it's there, I mean, and I'm hopeful it works out. I hope it doesn't become the white elephant that some people are worried it will. But I think it's always gonna be one of the central issues in a mayoral campaign because it's such a expensive infrastructure project for a relatively small city. You know, it would be fine if there were no other liabilities, or no other liabilities that might pop up all of a sudden, like the EPA requirement for Waikiki storage. Exactly. And that could exacerbate the whole issue about unliquidated liabilities. I think that's exactly right. Or the issue of the entire state pension and healthcare system. That will continue, I think, and become a more of a major issue, as I hope we don't, but as we could move to crisis with our unfunded liabilities there for public sector workers. So you have this body of millennials. And I hesitate to use that word, Colin, because I think the millennials are already so old that they're not millennials anymore. I'm technically a millennial. It gives you a sense of how old they get. But you know, we've been waiting, waiting for Godot, right? Waiting for the millennials to say something, do something, go out and vote, run for office, have a pro, whatever it is, they're not doing it. So I ask my students about this all the time. What are you guys doing? And their response is usually that they're active on social media, that they follow these issues. But it's not the same. In fact, it's why I require them in my class to go do something. They can work for a political campaign, they can volunteer for a get out the vote organization. And I always tell them, you have to do it in person. You have to talk to people. You can't do it online. Right, but they believe, they have been trained in their lives, their young lives to believe you can do everything by remote. Exactly, exactly. The power of social media is you can do it without touching anybody else. Yeah, you never have to leave you the comfort of your home to encounter people who might disagree with you or be very unfamiliar to you. I think it's really a profundity there. The more you see requires face on. It does. No, I mean, there's been many studies. I don't know if you've ever read Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone work, but many studies that show that it is that physical interaction that gives you more trust in your neighbor. Meeting somebody on the bus who doesn't look like you, you'd never encounter normally, but then they seem like a decent person. And that gives you faith that you can trust your fellow citizens. So who's the best bet on the mayor election? Caldwell. I think it's almost certain that Caldwell will win. He has, he's better financed. You know, there's, I think a ceiling to the anti-rail vote. And I don't think, what did you would have had to do was capture all of the Carlisle voters. And I don't think he's gonna do with them or do that. Now we don't have a gubernatorial race this year, but we will. And I wonder how you think that's going in terms of holding the electorate who elected him in the first place, you know, in for the second term. Well, that's a great question because E. Gay, of course, was elected primarily because he wasn't Neil Abercrombie. People didn't know a whole lot about him. He's not particularly popular. I mean, we don't have a lot of polls on approval ratings, but he should be doing better than he is for a heavily democratic state. I think he's trying more now, but query, can he do it? He certainly is, I think the question is, who will run against him? What's the alternative going to be? And I don't see a lot of strong potential candidates to take him on. I mean, most of the ones who could win or at least be competitive are probably gonna wait for him for another four years. Somebody in your class. Maybe so, somebody in your class. You never know. One last question, and then we gotta go. And that is, where does the native Hawaiian issue, you know, or issues play in the future of Hawaii politics? In, for example, that next race with David Ike, how is this gonna play out? Is it gonna be diluted at a certain point and sort of go away, or is it gonna get worse? Well, I think the interesting thing about the native Hawaiian politics is, I mean, the native Hawaiian community is incredibly good at contentious protest, I mean, drawing attention to their issues. That the problem though is, is that doesn't actually translate into widespread support. I mean, the telescope is a perfect example. There's been a lot of attention on it, there's a lot of legitimate arguments on both sides, but the truth of the matter is, the vast majority of people do support building the telescope. And so there's always this disconnect between the attention those issues receive and the fact that really people often disagree with the native Hawaiian community. And that's why the community, I think, intelligently goes to these confrontational political acts, because the ballot box doesn't work, exactly. We have to get back to the ballot box. Yes. We have to respect the system. Hopefully the millennials will have some say about that. I'm hopeful, I'm trying my best. Okay, I know you are. Thank you, Colin. My pleasure. I wonder if I'll have you down here and talk about these things. We'll do it again? All right, yes, of course. Aloha. Aloha.