[EAI Online Seminar] After Trump Series 1. America, After the Election

YouTube 링크 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngr0MhxabSw

The East Asia Institute (President Yul Sohn) held the online seminar “America, After the Election” on November 10, 2020. The seminar is the first of the [After Trump] online seminar series. During this seminar, panelists Professor Paul Pierson and Professor Taeku Lee of University of California, Berkeley provided an analysis on the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, discussed the new administration’s challenges, and its foreign and domestic policy prospects. Professor Byoung Kwon Sohn of Chung-Ang University was the discussant for the seminar, and the session was moderated by President Yul Sohn(Professor, Yonsei University).

• Date & Time : November 10, 2020, 10:00–11:20 (KST)
• Speakers: Paul Pierson (John Gross Endowed Chair and Professor of Political Science, University of California at Berkeley)
  
                Taeku Lee (George Johnson Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, University of California at Berkeley)
• Discussant: Byoung Kwon Sohn (Professor, Chung-Ang University)
• Moderator: Yul Sohn (President, EAI; Professor, Yonsei University)

Can the Biden Administration Bring Normalcy to the United States?

Democratic Backsliding, Race War, Political Divide, and Decline in Global Leadership

I. Analysis of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Highest Voter Turnout in U.S. history

• Professor Paul Pierson and Professor Taeku Lee both emphasize how the 2020 presidential election saw the highest voter turnout in U.S. history since the early 20^th century. A record number of voters cast their ballots as a result of successful mobilization of by both the Trump and Biden campaigns. According to Professor Lee, the total number will reach around 150 million Americans once the exit polls are finalized, which is two-thirds of the eligible voters. Trump is also on target to receive nine million more total votes than he did in 2016, and Biden is on target to receive 11 million more total votes than Hillary Clinton did.

Election Characterized by “Deep Division” in Race (Race War)

• Professor Lee contends that one of the main characteristics of the recent election is the "story about racial division in America.” Although the U.S. was already racially dividedbefore Donald Trump ascended to presidency, he has deepened those divisions with his rhetoric and with his policies.
• He adds by stating that the exit polls clearly show Biden and Harris won because Black, Latino, Asian-American, and Native American voters "coalesced to deliver the White House for the Democrats.” Within the polling that Professor Lee conducted, he found that 89% of Blacks, 70% of Latinos, 68% of Asian-Americans voted for Biden and Harris. By contrast, only 41% of Whites voted for Biden and Harris. And from the White population, Biden and Harris received 43% of the White female vote, 49% of the college educated White vote, 46% of the suburban White vote, and 46% of the 18~29 year-old White vote.

Close Election & Unexpected Outcomes

• Although once the dust settles and all of the votes are tallied, Biden and Harris would have received five million more votes than the other side, Professor Lee argues that the outcome was "remarkably close still” in the key respect of the Electoral College vote. Five million votes may seem a large number, but it is only one percent of the total vote margin and if it had been distributed selectively across Wisconcin, Georgia and Arizona, there would have been an entirely different outcome in terms of the Electoral College vote.
• According to Professor Pierson, the Democratic coalition in the Midwest, or the 'Blue Wall,’ which includes Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania is evolving with the changing racial makeup. It was also a close election in the 'Blue Wall’ as Biden and Harris had "just the enough” turnout including that of people of color in urban areas "to swing the balance.” On the other hand, "it [was] a big deal” that the Democrats carried the 'Sunbelt’ including Arizona and Georgia, which are traditionally more Republican. Georgia, in particular, is now racially a"majority nonwhite” state compared to 2010, with 58% of its population composed of Asian-Americans, Blacks and Latinos.
• Professor Pierson adds that Biden and Harris were able to win the Midwest not just by recapturing the white working class voters, but also by making significant gains in the suburbs. Professor Lee also agrees that a Democratic win in the Midwest is worth the attention, considering how well Trump did in mobilizing his base in those states throughout the last couple of weeks.

II. The Future of the Biden Administration

Political Gaps Widen & Biden Administration's Reforms Have Their Limits

• Professor Pierson and Professor Lee both recognize domestic political divide and democratic backsliding as the Biden administration's primary challenges. According to Professor Lee, the U.S. is "deeply divided as a country” by ideological and racial polarization, which are set against a backdrop of "much weaker social institutions, rise of conspiratorial thinking, pervasive distrust in the institutions that adjudicate facks such as mainstream media, the criminal justice system, science and the academy.” The U.S. has lost a lot of what it had in the past in terms of having a public sphere for the free competition of ideas, which is the "pulse of flourishing democracies, both as an ideal and as a practice.” Instead, such loss has been replaced by the exchange of information channeled thorough "filter bubbles.” Although this was all true before Donald Trump was elected president, it has become much truer during his presidency and for the forseeable future.
• Professor Lee also argues that amid polarization, the Biden administration will face a "double edged sword”:  on the one hand, it will face unwavering opposition from the Republicans and remaining Trump supporters, all the while  being unable to deliver the policies that are needed to keep the coalition of independent centrist Democrats and leftist Democrats. According to Professor Lee, for Biden, "the core of voters most responsible for winning him the election” starts with Black voters and from those, poor Black voters. Therefore, beyond addressing COVID-19 and the economic fallout, police reform and racial justice are rewards that the Biden administration looks to grant its core voters, which are likely to meet opposition by the Republicans.
• Professor Pierson states that while the election results in both the Electoral College and the popular vote are indicative of "a clear defeat of President Trump,” the Democrats did not capture the Senate. Although there is an opportunity for the Democrats to do so in early January with the runoff elections in Georgia, it is more likely that they will not. In such a case, Republicans will continue to hold majority control in the very powerful U.S. Senate, which means that the Biden administration will not be able to pass legislation unless it is acceptable to the majority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell. Biden will also be unable to appoint judges unless the Republican Senate majority allows him to do so.
• Professor Pierson adds by referencing how following the announcement of the election results, Republican leaders including Mitch McConnell amplified Trump's accusations that the election was legitimate, which they "did not do right.” On the other hand, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle (George H.W. Bush's vice president), and several past Republican leaders came out with a congratulatory statement and publicly recognized that there had been no fraud. Such contrast in behavior and the relative maturity portrayed by those in acceptance of Biden highlight what the U.S. can expect in the days ahead in terms of the health of American democracy and its ability to “govern ahead of Trump and their party.” In the perspective of the Republican Party, it is imprudent to support Trump's "baseless accusations of an illegitimate election” as doing so will only "fracture the party that would lead to fury on the right wing of the party in away that would potentially cost Republicans the election in Georgia.”

The U.S. May Have Distanced Itself from Flames, but Its Institution Continues to Erode

• According to both Professor Pierson and Professor Lee, "Trump has unmistakably fanned the flames” of racial polarization and democratic backsliding within the U.S. Although Biden's victory signals the U.S. distancing from the conflagration set forth by the Trump administration, the American institution as a democracy still remains in flames due to continued democratic backsliding. Professor Pierson also observes that such "slippage of democracy” is reminiscent of that in countries like Hungary, Brazil or Poland.
• Professor Lee states that whether Trump accepts the outcome of the election will also dictate the overall state of U.S. governance and the country's status as a functioning democracy.  He personally believes that Trump will have to accept the outcome in which case, "the dark clouds over American democracy for the last three or four years will lift.” In addition, he hopes that once the dark clouds are lifted, the U.S. as a government will awake from the long period under the Trump presidency to return to "pre-Trump normalcy.” Pre-Trump normaly refers to the U.S. aspiring to return to its standing as global leader, staunch ally, reliable trade partner, and a force for positive change on problems requiring multilateral solutions like climate change and the threat of future pandemics.” He adds that a lot depends on how deep and resolute Trump's support among voters is, and what fraction of his voters is militant and militarized.

Biden's Keys to Success: Personal Decency & Foreign Policy

• According to Professor Lee, Biden's politicalsskills and personal relationships could build a consensus around daunting challenges, such as executing a coordinated federal response to mitigate and comat the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. With the whole country "tired from the last four years,” Professor Lee also states that Biden can unilaterally lead an example if he can successfully be the president he says he will "for all Americans,” including those who did not vote for him, especially through his initial set of policy priorities.
• Both Professor Pierson and Professor Lee emphasize foreign policy as "the one place where Biden is likely to have considerable room to maneuver” and the "one bright side.” For instance, Biden has high credibility among countries that have been traditionally allies with the U.S. Foreign policy and the U.S. returning to its oncepreeminent place as a leader of the free world is a less contentious issue. Political elites, including many of those in the Republican Party who have been unhappy with the instability of Trump's "random tweet driven version of an America” would also care about this issue. Professor Pierson adds that Biden's "decency as a person and credibility in foreign policy” are the two strongest suits for the president elect. With the Republican retaining the majority of the Senate, foreign policy will provide the Biden administration the ability to exert more influence.
• Professor Pierson adds that Trump's four years have damaged the fundamental trust that the U.S. shares with its allies, and as the Trump experience has shown, allies will be asking themselves, "how much can we rely on the credibility of the U.S.?” He highlights that there is honesty and cooperation that emanates from the person who is the leader of the U.S. but also expectations that the U.S. must follow through and commit to as an ally in the long-term. Since currently, there is an absence of such kind of confidence, building or rebuilding an alliance—even without all of the other challenges the international community faces—will be extremely difficult. ■

III. Speaker, Discussant, and Moderator Bios

■ Paul Pierson is the John Gross Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He is an active commentator on public affairs, whose writings have appeared in such outlets as The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. He has served on the editorial boards of The American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, and The Annual Review of Political Science. He has also served as Chair of the Berkeley political science department. His research focuses on the fields of American politics and public policy, comparative political economy, and social theory. He is the co-author (with Jacob S. Hacker) of the forthcoming Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality. Earlier books include Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Abandoned the Middle Class (2010), co-authored by Jacob Hacker, and Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (2004). He also authored Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment (1994), which won the American Political Science Association's 1995 prize for the best book on American national politics, and “Path Dependence, Increasing Returns and the Study of Politics,” which won the APSA’s prize for the best article in the American Political Science Review in 2000, as well as the Aaron Wildavsky Prize in 2011.

■ Taeku Lee is George Johnson Professor of Law and Professor Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He is co-Principal Investigator of the National Asian American Survey, co-Principal Investigator of the Bay Area Poverty Tracker, and Managing Director of Asian American Decisions. He also serves on the National Advisory Committee for the U.S. Census Bureau and has previously served as member of the Board of Overseers of the American National Election Studies, member of the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey, Treasurer and the Executive Council member for the American Political Science Association, Department Chair at Berkeley, and Associate Director of the Haas Institute at Berkeley. His research focuses on racial and ethnic politics, public opinion and survey research, identity and inequality, and deliberative and participatory democracy. His recent publications include the Oxford Handbook of Racial and Ethnic Politics in the United States (2015) and Asian American Political Participation (2011).

■ Yul Sohn is the president of EAI and a professor at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of International Studies. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He previously served as the dean of Yonsei University GSIS, president of the Korean Association of International Studies, and president of the Korean Studies of Contemporary Japan. His research focuses on the Japanese and international political economy, East Asian regionalism, and public diplomacy. His recent publications include Japan and Asia's Contested Order (2018, with T.J. Pempel), and Understanding Public Diplomacy in East Asia (2016, with Jan Melissen).

■ Byoung Kwon Sohn is a professor at the Department of Politics and International Relations, Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Korea. He teaches American Politics, American Foreign Policy, and Party and Legislative Politics as a subdivision of Comparative Politics. He got both BA and MA degrees from the Department of International Relations, Seoul National University, and Ph.D. from Department of Political Science, the University of Michigan, majoring in American Politics. He published several books and articles, including Climate Change and the Dilemma for the U.S. Hegemony (2012, written in Korean), Is U.S. Congressional Politics Still a Model to Follow? The U.S. Congress Captured by Partisan Politics (2018, written in Korean), “The Superdelegate Reform in 2018 in the Context of Democratic Party's Delegate Reform History” (2019, written in Korean).

영상 스크립트

hello everyone welcome to east asia institute's online seminar uh america after the election uh i'm your son president of eai and beyonce university professor uh i'm excited to host uh today's seminar um as the beginning of of our four consecutive webinar series titled after trump the themes include u.s korea cooperation under great power rivalry iraq u.s alliance and its future under the new administration and economic partnership under the great economic decoupling this one also uh is a sequel to

our previous webinar held in may last i mean this year so it was six months ago uh the title prospects for the upcoming u.s election today we are featuring uh the same panelists as before uh professors uh paul pearson tagli and pyeong won zone i'm actually thrilled to have all them back because their predictions made six months ago are very very accurate they said that trump is clearly underdog biting wins trump might not succeed concede um existing forecasting models are most likely fail and copied elections etc so um

it's truly a great gathering again um for uh our first speaker uh paul pearson um is the john gross professor of political science at the university of california berkeley he is an active commentator on on public affairs whose writings appear in various places including new york times washington post and new republic his is the co-author of the forthcoming book let them eat towards how the rights rule in the age of extreme inequality a very interesting topic title and he has many prize-winning books including uh politics and time

dismantling uh the welfare state et cetera and uh his article i think it came out long time ago uh past dependence increasing returns and the study of politics is a must read uh you know article to every you know graduate students in political science so um very famous work and our second speaker is professor teku lee who is the george johnson professor of law and professor of political science at the university of california berkeley he has hands-on experience with surveys and elections he is a co-principal investigator of the

national asian american survey co-principal investigator of the bay area poverty tracker and managing director of asian american decisions he also serves on the national advisory committee for the u.s census bureau and he previously served as a member of the board of overseers of the american national election studies and member of the board of overseas of the general social survey as well as treasurer and executive council member for the american political science association long list um and his research uh obviously focused

on the racial and and um ethnic politics and public opinion and survey research uh etc so and his recent publications include oxford handbook of racial and ethnic politics in the united states and asian american political participation with that today's uh discussant is professor son byungwon of chung university who is a leading scholar in the field of american politics in korea he has published many books including climate change and dilemma for the us germany and is the united states congressional politics

still a model to follow the u.s congress captured by the partisan politics et cetera today's format uh webinar format is is that it is divided into three so first maybe first round we will discuss elections past elections and the second round will be what comes next for the biden presidency and finally we'll have q a section from the audience actually we have a long list of questions from the audience and i i just you know oversee it and there are very interesting questions there so i will introduce them

to to you so with that said for the first round let's start with the election given the trump presidency actually damaging the united states inside in ice outside this election 2020 election is a in a sense watershed and probably uh the most consequential since world war ii or some may say since civil war uh so um let me uh first uh you know ask uh you know paul and then uh tegu uh what's your takeaways from this uh election paul it's uh it's great to be back in this conversation um with you um so and i

i was planning on starting with uh with what you finished with which is i think it is right to say uh the most consequential election since at least world war ii but but arguably you you could go back even further than that and um so the fact that we're saying that i think is indicative of how deep the structural challenges are facing the united states today and how deep the divide is and so um rather than going into too much detail about all the twists and turns of the campaign and the election

i wanted to start by just um framing it by imagining three possible outcomes uh that could that could have come about on tuesday uh which is each seemed plausible and each i think would have had very different consequences we'll get into the more details of the consequences in the second part now that we i think know where we are which path we're on uh but i think we can really understand things best by thinking about the three alternatives so that the first would be um president trump being re-elected um

and even though uh joe biden won the popular vote by it looks like you know ultimately it'll probably be four or five percent um you know it was close enough in uh the electoral college that you don't have to imagine all that many votes switching hands to imagine a world in which president trump was re-elected and if we had been on that path i don't think it would be alarmist to say we would have been continuing down the path of democratic backsliding what steve lavitzky and daniel ziblad have called democratic backsliding in

their book how democracies die because there has been a steady erosion of the guardrails of democracy in american society during the trump presidency and with four more years to fill the courts to fill the national security and law enforcement apparatuses to launch assaults on the media i think and without the shadow of an impending election hanging over him um i think we could certainly have expected that we would have seen the continuing slippage of democracy that you've seen in some other countries like

hungary um or brazil or poland uh to have taken place in the united states the second possible um outcome was um you know what we call here the blue wave scenario um in which which i think you know many pollsters anticipated and maybe we'll want to talk a little bit about the polling but a blue wave election which would have involved a big democratic victory um with um a clear repudiation of the trump presidency a substantial enough victory in the senate to give democrats at least a small but working majority in

the senate um that would have put us in on a very different path it would have opened up at least some prospects for significant political uh and social reform uh the biden and you know the the president-elect um had talked about his plans recognizing that he was going to be in a kind of new deal kind of situation biden himself i think pretty moderate but seeing that this was going to be a moment for aggressive reforms and whether whether you're talking about climate change or dealing with the pandemic or the kinds of political

reforms that would address i think some really deep dysfunctions in the american political system like the existence of the filibuster which makes it very difficult to legislate um so the second path would have been the blue wave path um we got neither of those paths in the election um we're on the the third path um which involved um uh i think a clear defeat of uh president trump um you know the election results in both the electoral college and the popular vote are clear um biden uh is is ahead in the in the electoral

college uh in some ways it's kind of the mirror image of what happened in 2016 same same likely electoral college a vote count though with somewhat larger margins uh in the in the critical states than was true when hillary clinton was defeated by donald trump um and then a clearer popular vote uh majority of course um but we'll probably have to get into this there is discussion about fraud and so on there is no evidence no evidence of any significant regulate uh irregularities uh in the election uh this is something

uh these accusations in many ways i think are completely predictable uh given the nature of the man in the white house but um but the electoral result was was clear although there is likely to be a fair amount of noise around it in in the weeks to come but democrats did not capture the senate um they still could if they win um both of the runoff elections that will be held in uh in the state of georgia in early january they will not be favorites uh to win those races i i think it's fair to say um and we will

be in a very different situation uh if they are or not able to uh win those races because if they are not uh which i think again is more likely then republicans will continue to hold majority control in the very powerful u.s senate which means that a president biden essentially will not be able to pass legislation unless it is acceptable to the majority leader of the senate mitch mcconnell and will not be able to appoint judges unless the republican senate majority is willing to let him do that and they may

let him appoint a few and judges mattered tremendously in american in the american institutional framework so we got a mixed result uh which is and and although there's i think understandably enormous focus on the fact that um president trump is going to have to leave office we need to recognize that it is a mixed result and that it leaves the united states continuing to be in the world that it has been in now for really i think i think one could argue almost a quarter century um a very deep divides between the parties

um and with the parties being quite evenly matched both presidential candidates received more votes than any presidential candidate has received in american political history right which indicates that both sides were really able to mobilize their supporters um and the outcome was a pretty close thing so um i i will can get into this more and then maybe in the next round of the discussion but the american political system is prone to gridlock the way the system is designed and it encourages particularly i would

say the conservative party which is less committed to the idea of having government actually function it encourages that party to engage in ways that that threaten the legitimacy of the system and make it as difficult as possible for um for the government to function well that's so it's it's very much a mixed outcome even though you see hundreds of thousands of people celebrating in the streets and i think with reason for those who are concerned about the health of democracy the next few years are likely to

continue to be quite difficult once thank you thank you uh thank you paul um kind of pessimistic uh uh evaluation uh you know one one on one one quick follow-up question you said um the highest turnout in in the u.s history right this uh election how that uh actually played out uh in in the race uh is it for biden or for um you know trump do you have uh any analysis of that turnout uh well so it's the the highest turnout in 100 years as a percentage i think of the la of those eligible to vote um but just

numerically the highest turnout ever you know parker's the population has grown and there are a lot more people who are eligible to vote um but um you know i i i think it was a case where both sides really mobilized their voters uh and i mean we can talk take you would be is much better position to talk about this and i am about some of the changes around the edges that are interesting people who maybe switch sides or where there was a disproportionate growth but i think the overall story is that

both sides really got their voters out um and if there was anything surprising there uh you know if if folks watching were following the lead up to the campaign you know i think pollsters expected on average a bigger victory than biden got you know they were looking for him to win by maybe eight or nine points where it looks like it'll end up being something like five and my my sense of that is um that the the biggest mistake there was once again as happened in 2016 underestimating the capacity of donald

trump to get out small town and rural voters who are sometimes not regular voters but they came out to vote for donald trump thank you thank you paul i think yes uh you know tegu you it's your turn uh yeah tell us more about uh the election uh particularly uh just last point of uh paul that uh you know there's a still a discrepancy between um you know uh you know polls uh you know forecasting and the actual result uh the gab is uh three four uh percent uh overall and how do we explain that um so

including that question uh it's your your turn sure thank uh thank you so much thank you again president son and east asia institute for the opportunity to bring bring us back to recap to 2020 elections uh a lot has happened since may and so it's a pleasure and honor to be invited back to take stock uh of the past half year uh i'm i'm gonna get to the question of polling uh at the end because it'll require a little bit of getting into the weeds but i think first in terms of analyzing the election results

i would start where i ended um my part of the presentation back in may where i ended by saying that you know it's not clear in 2020 that democracy would be the only game in town where the only thing the losers would want to do is to try again within the same institutions under which they had just lost which is a famous description of stable consolidated democracies and that there were specifically four possible outcomes you know trump wins and the democrats accept the outcome trump wins and the democrats refuse to

accept the outcome biden wins and trump accepts the outcome or biden wins and trump refuses to accept the outcome and you know by now it is clear that biden has won but it is far from clear that trump will accept the outcome and if he does not accept the outcome what that means for whether we are still a functioning democracy and what that means in terms of governance uh for the united states now to be realistic it is still i think more likely than not that trump will have to accept the outcome once

his litany of legal challenges which have so far been facially meritless have run their course and when that happens it may well be the case that the dark clouds over our democracy for the last three or four years will lift and the us as a government if not as a people will awake from this sort of long period of bewitchment under the trump presidency and return to some semblance of pre-trump normalcy where i think you can maybe again think of the united states as aspiring to return to its standing as global leader staunch ally

reliable trade partner and a force for positive change on problems requiring multilateral solutions like climate change and the future and the threat of future pandemics i think that is still the likely road ahead but it is still possible that we won't go down that likely road and a lot still depends on how deep and resolute trump's support among voters is or you know it's hard to even think in these terms or what fraction of his voters are militant and militarized and much still depends on whether institutions like the

republican party and its leaders and the conservative media and its spokespersons put the cult of personality that is trump ahead of the nation's 233-year history as a constitutional electoral democracy and you know here i'm of the same mind as paul that so far distressingly few national leaders of the republican party have even acknowledged the legitimacy of the 2020 election despite there being no shred of evidence to suggest that the election is not legitimate then in terms of analysis of the

outcomes itself i think there are at least two key stories to the outcome one of which you have undoubtedly heard a lot about and paul has mentioned as well and that is the story of turnout the other key to the outcome is one that i think is still relatively less talked about or talked about in terms that i think are misleading and that is the story of race the turnout story is clear and to an extent uncomplicated a record number of americans voted voted by mail voted early voted on election day and when the final

tally is reported we'll see that nearly 150 million americans will have voted or two out of every three americans eligible to vote and as paul mentioned that's going to be the highest proportion of voter eligible americans to have voted since the early 20th century what we're learning from the vote count is that this record turnout is the result of mobilization on both sides of the campaign so trump is on target to get nine million more total votes than he did in 2016 and biden is on target to get 11 million

more total votes than hillary clinton did in 2020. so this last weekend you may have seen you know even in korea accounts of hundreds of thousands of americans spilling into the streets in festive celebration of biden's electoral victory uh and in mainstream media with the exception of fox news i think one repeated theme in the coverage of these celebrations was that american voters without shedding a drop of blood had ousted a uh you know authoritarian ruler in the making using just the power of the popular vote

and when the dust settles and all the votes are finally tallied i think one side biden harris will have received five million more votes than the other side so that's all to the good to an extent but i think we still have to keep in mind that the ouster of authoritarian rulers or wannabe authoritarian rulers which i think is a fair characterization of donald trump often takes more than one election and in the key respect of the electoral college vote i think the 2020 outcome was remarkably close

still so the total vote margin is going to wind up being about 5 million and that's a huge number but if you just pull off one percent of that total vote margin 50 000 votes and you distribute that selectively across wisconsin georgia and arizona you would have had an entirely different outcome in terms of the electoral college vote in 2020 and we could instead be here talking about what another four years of a trump pence presidency means for the united states for korea and for the world i mentioned

that the second story of the 2020 election is a story about racial division in america and that this story is either buried behind the lead or covered in misleading way so let me say a little bit about that uh to start with um the u.s was already divided by race before donald trump ascended to the presidency but it is clear that he has deepened those divisions with his rhetoric and with his policies trump may not have invented racial polarization or white supremacist movements but he has unmistakably fanned their flames

the exit polls show clearly that biden harris won because a coalition of black latino asian american native american voters coalesced to deliver the white house for the democrats and in polling that i've conducted along with posters whose septa who specialize in targeted representative samples of latinos and african-americans we find 89 of blacks 70 of latinos 68 of asian americans voted for biden and harris and by contrast only 41 percent of whites voted for biden and harris moreover had trump and pence been

re-elected it would have been because a solid majority 56 percent of white voters were fined with further democratic backsliding they would have been fined with a descent into authoritarian rule and they would have been fined with re-electing a president who dog whistled to white supremacists if you follow the news from the us on race and the 2020 vote i think you would what you'll read is a lot about conservative latinos in miami-dade county and along the rio grande in texas you'll probably read a little bit about

rap music artists like kanye west and ice cube trying to mobilize the african-american male vote in greater numbers for donald trump in 2016. and uh then they in 2020 than they did in 2016. uh but you almost surely won't read many stories um about the fact that there was this uh enormous coalition of voters of color i think what you see in the news misses the forest for the trees the margins favoring biden over trump and these demographic groups remain very very high plus the turnout grew enormously in 2020 and because of

that combination high margins and voter turnout biden won on the other side i think if you follow the news you'll see a lot of pundits and pollsters uh who will go on at length they did before the election and many have since tuesday about the key role that different demographic segments of white voters may have played in the success of biden's victory focusing on white women white college educated voters white suburban voters white young voters and what they have yet to unearth in election results and exit polls is

that biden and harris did not win a majority of the counted votes in any of these demographic subgroups of white voters so they won 43 of the white female vote 49 of the college educated white vote 46 of the suburban white vote 46 of the 18 to 29 year old white vote so the racial division in the american electorate really i think determined the partisan outcome in the election now in terms of polls and whether or not polls raise expectations in terms of the final vote count i think uh paul is on to one key part of

the story which is that there's sort of a mismatch in terms of pre-election polls between their predictions for the likely outcomes in national elections which remain pretty good and the extent to which they have missed their call in state level elections which sometimes they've missed really badly part of it is because it is really hard to include certain segments of the american population into surveys but part of the reason why that is is the technology of polling in the united states has increasingly shifted

towards list-based polling um online polling and polling which is not based on represent representativeness but based on targeted quotas meaning when people especially in states are trying to get what they what they would call a representative sample let's say of texans they only focus on trying to get 20 latinos 50 women you know 24 18 to 29 year olds and once they hit those targets they'll claim to be representative but the methodology for getting people in those numbers in those different demographic groups

is not the same as representative random sampling and so when you do that and you're very reliant on lists you have to ask who is not likely to be on a lot of these vendor lists that parties are using and that mainstream media sources are using and it tends to be people like rural voters the hard to reach voters that trump was very successful in mobilizing in 2016 and in 2020 so i think there are some systematic sources of bias in the way posters have been doing their work and it's not easy to think about how

they might get more accurate especially at the state level based on the way that they're conducting these polls all right thank you tegu uh let let's uh uh invite uh pyongyang song um i think uh he has uh he's an uh election expert so he has uh questions to you so uh i'm very happy to see you all again and this is a great honor for me to join this discussion and you know i heard uh from all of you that this election was no landslide victory for biden and its so called the regular thin election and

as professor tagli said it's you know uh and also paul peterson said this election is you know an election of deep division in terms of parties in terms of ideology in terms of you know uh race and we learned a lot from what you have talked so far and um i have several questions after not several one question to each you know of you uh after listening to your presentation the first thing is that as we know that uh the the focal point of this election to my reading is that whether uh you know uh democratic

candidate biden can take again the blue the great the blue or three states you know wisconsin michigan pennsylvania that was the first focal point in this election to my mind and he finally succeeded in getting them back but the you know the margin was very very you know close at least you know particularly in pennsylvania michigan was the margin was pretty big given that can we say that you know uh the blue collar workers in those three blue states they you know uh what are they what what is what are

their stance for example we can't say that they cross the point of no return to the democratic party or you know um if we had a stronger candidate this than this biden can a stronger or more popular candidate you know had would have gained more support from those blue collar candidates or you know we now can normally say that you know the blue color you know the the blue world is no more in the bullwork of the democratic party that's the first question i want to ask to you know paul pearson and the second

question to you is that you know what happened to the sunbelt you know states like arizona and georgia so why you know more voters supported you know biden than we expected compared to 2016 election so there is it you know because of incoming you know influx of you know latino migrants from the south or what what what was working there you know giving more votes compared to 2016 to you know democratic candidate that's the question i want to ask to you know paul pearson and the question and comment to professor lee is that

i'm afraid to think a little bit otherwise then you have reported on racial division when i saw the ndc exit poll you know um the the result is slightly different uh from what you have just said in this presentation which means that the nbc expo says that you know uh 51 we if we mix race and education 51 of white college graduates supported by slightly more than 50 percent you know it depends on what you have seen in survey and it depends on you know nbc and cnn other survey organization and at the same time mdc expo reports

that 54 percent of white women college graduates supported you know uh joe biden too so we mix education and race the result is slightly different not you know all together you know say no to what you have presented but slightly different what you gave in this presentation that's the as a question i want to ask you thank you paul uh do you want to reply to that sure i'll start that's a um a great question um hard to give a short answer to but i'll try i think one way to think about the democratic

coalition the evolving democratic coalition is that the midwest what you call the blue wall michigan wisconsin pennsylvania is the past of the democratic party and the sun belt is the future of the democratic party um much of that for the reasons that tegu was was uh indicating in his com comments the the changing racial makeup of the coalition and and um you know which especially if you look forward in time is is just going to continue um i you know we don't know you know it is early days to try to do a fine-grained analysis

of the voting um you know i think it will take some time to have confidence about exactly which groups voted uh voted for whom but but but my read on biden in the midwest was you know that he did just enough though mostly not by recapturing white working-class voters though there was some of that um but mostly um by making some gains in the suburbs um some significant gain in the suburbs um and um whether biden gets responsibility for this probably not but some improvement again in the race and and the turnout of

uh people of people of color um in urban areas around urban areas um in those states just enough right to swing the balance i mean actually you know turnout among democrats and the vote for for biden was substantially higher than it was for hillary clinton but it needed to be because uh turnout and vote for donald trump in these states was also higher um so than it had been in 2016.

my you know educated guess is that biden was the right candidate for the party at this moment that those those white suburban gains and at least kind of staunching the slide of white working-class voters towards the republicans were necessary and that biden was the best place to make those kinds of gains one initial piece of evidence of that is that i think in all these states biden ran ahead ran ahead of congressional democrats he got more votes than congressional democrats did right which suggests

that there were voters out there my guess is that a fair number of them were in the suburbs uh who voted for biden at the same time that they did not vote uh for democrats for congressional seats you know turning very quickly to the sun belt um it is a from the democrats perspective it's a big deal um that they carried um uh arizona and georgia um if in fact they end up it seems likely that they're gonna carry uh both those states they've carried neither of those states i think the last time they carried

georgia was 1992 or nine maybe 96 um and you know they haven't carried arizona since i don't know when i maybe take who knows but uh much longer back than that so the you know those are indications i think of um how that electoral environment is changing uh for democrats they now hold all eight um uh senate seats in the southwest right if you look at uh colorado new mexico arizona california those are all democratic seats um that's an extraordinary change um you know especially in arizona so um you know i think democrats can feel

pretty good about the gains that they made there even though um you know it's a different story if you look at texas and um florida thank you paul thank you and tegu sure um i i'd like to give a quick answer uh to the question uh that professor song posed to me but then i'd also like to say a couple of things about the questions posed to paul if i may so i i think um uh i don't disagree well one one thing is if there's a discrepancy in the numbers you're seeing and the numbers i'm seeing with uh mainstream media exit polls

in the us in part the discrepancy may be due to when you are checking the exit poll results because part of what they do is they um do some post election uh re-weighting of their results so that their final numbers wind up looking like the actual numbers in the states it's almost so that they can't be wrong so they'll do some adjustments afterwards so that might be part of the difference but i think the bigger point for me is that you have to really drill down to cuts of demographic groups down to be

being able to say white women college graduates you know and maybe if you said white women college graduates living in california you'd get up to 58 but you really have to you know break up the white electorate down to those groups to find a majority that was uh that voted for biden and the question is why does it matter so much like why why are media pundits so focused on what the white electorate did and my reading on that is you know biden's sort of campaign slogan was the battle for the soul of america

and i think what he meant by that was the battle for the soul of white america because it's clear that for non-white voters for the last four years they've wanted to oust trump from the white house and really the puzzle was what what would white voters do in response to having a president who really fanned the flames of white nationalist groups in the united states and i think the jury is still out because of the way the white voter white vote was split in 2020 i think that battle for the soul of white

america is still ongoing if you look at states like california and new york i think you'll find that a greater share of white voters voted democratic than they may have in the past but if you look at the heartland of america i think it's gone the other way um i think and then to your to your um point about the blue wall states and the sun belt states i it's hard for me to imagine a candidate that would have done better in michigan wisconsin and pennsylvania than than biden did conditioned on how well

trump did in mobilizing um his face in those states in the last couple of weeks which i think is something that a lot of people maybe because of a you know liberal bias in analysts like paul and i and maybe some media outlets if we wouldn't have anticipated that level of mobilization from trump's base in those three states and given that fact it's hard to think of another candidate that would have done better than biden did and on the sun belt i think you are right that a lot of uh the story behind what's

happened in those dates is the story of demographic change so you know to get just one one example uh georgia's seventh congressional district which just flipped from uh republican to democrat and had been a republican stronghold for decades and decades in 2004 the democrats didn't even feel the candidate because it was that non-competitive since since in the last decade since 2010 that that district has gone from being eight percent asian american to almost 16 percent asian american and from being about 12 latino to

more than 22 latino and if you add to that the 20 some percent who are african-american it's now a majority non-white and that is the biggest reason why districts like that are changing to the extent that they're changing so um you know and you get that sort of effects more broadly across all these sunbelt states that's the story of colorado it's the story of nevada that's the story of new mexico that's the story of arizona thank you okay thank you um so i think that's uh pretty much about uh our

uh first round um which deals with the election uh per se and now uh turned to um i think uh you know actually uh here the audience in south korea uh more interested in you know what actually uh are lying ahead for uh the biden presidency i mean if uh he becomes uh the president and um i mean the the question is is uh is it really a a beginning of the end of uh you know champion trumpism or trumpian uh politics of uh you know depolarization democratic backsliding racial division and all other things that

you know tegu and paul have mentioned today and it sounds pessimistic about about the future um and also um externally uh you know united states is is clearly a damaged uh great power uh you know trump's unilateralism you know problems with the alliance and partnerships and international institutions uh in disarray and you know american soft power is really being undercut so uh things like that so whether uh biden can you know turn around this country in in four years of uh of his presidency so uh that's kind

of you know the question that we want to ask to you so again well this time maybe we start from uh tegu first sure happy too you know i think in terms of challenges and and difficulties in the road ahead i think i would start you know where where i ended my analysis on the election which is that i think the united states is just deeply uh deeply divided as a country i think we are divided by ideological polarization and racial polarization and those things are set against a backdrop of you know much weaker

social institutions vanishing vanishing social capital the rise of conspiratorial thinking pervasive distrust in the institutions that really adjudicate things like facts you know like mainstream media our criminal justice system science and the academy and so on um we've we've lost a lot of what we've had uh in the past in terms of having a public sphere for the free competition of ideas which in some in some sense is sort of the pulse of flourishing democracies both i think both as an ideal and as a practice

and you know instead that loss has been replaced by the exchange of information that's channeled through filter bubbles political deliberation that is siloed into echo chambers and you know this was all true of the us before donald trump was elected president and it has become much much more true during his presidency because of his presidency and for the foreseeable future i think it will continue to be true in the united states so electing joe biden as our 46th president may have rescued in the short run the u.s from a further

dissent and further democratic backsliding but it will likely have little effect in the short term on these sources of erosion into our body politics so i think the most obvious challenge and difficulty is that president-elect biden will have to govern in this environment and under these circumstances and that'll be extremely hard it'll be especially hard if trump decides after he leaves office to be something of a professional gadfly who is committed to obstructing anything that biden tries to do

so that where one side will claim an electoral mandate and try to undo many of trump's policies the other side may continue to question the legitimacy of the election results with unsubstantiated allegations of you know some specter of electoral fraud or to take another example governing in this environment will also be hard if on the democratic side or the law and order side there are prosecutors who investigate and indict president trump for crimes committed during and prior to his presidency where

one side will see moral high ground and signaling that nobody in america even an outgoing president is above the law the other side will continue to see the dark reach of a deep state that is you know hell-bent and single-minded in terms of wanting to prosecute donald trump so on the domestic side i think it's entirely possible that the new biden administration will just face constant roadblocks and potholes at every step of the way trying to enact as legislative agenda now i'd like to believe that there are

some consensus issues or at least issues that somebody of uh joe biden's political skills and personal relationships could build a consensus around where the president-elect is less likely to face these kinds of daunting challenges such as executing a coordinated federal response to mitigate and combat the coronavirus pandemic but i think even there things are likely to be very very difficult in the road ahead and if that's the case i think biden faces a further challenge it's almost a double-edged sword of on

the one hand facing unwavering opposition from the republicans and remaining trump supporters all the while being unable to deliver the policies that are needed to keep his hard-won coalition of independent centrist democrats and leftist democrats behind him to support him i think there perhaps the biggest challenges uh is kind of the time tested rule of thumb that you have to reward your base you have to reward the people that put you into office those core voters most responsible for winning the election for you

and i think for biden that core starts with black voters and for black voters beyond addressing covet and the economic fallout from covet the two top issues in this election were police reform and racial justice and even in the last week those issues specifically have already divided the democratic party in terms of how poorly the democratic party did in senate races and in congressional races and that just adds to the difficulty even among trump's supporters that he will not be able to deliver on the issues that they

voted him for so is there no possible hope for a successful biden presidency here you know i think the future biden administration could assemble the building blocks to a successful presidency by looking for early wins on two issues that i think might be less likely to be contentious so the first of these is that i think the country even many and maybe most trump supporters are just frustrated and fed up with how polarized our politics is and we are hungry for less division and more decency for less constant chaos and crisis and

more regular routine boring normal politics i think that the country as a whole is just tired from the last four years and here i think joe biden can unilaterally lead by example if he can successfully not only keep repeating his invocation of being the president for all americans including those who didn't vote for him and then show the skeptics what that means in terms of his initial set of policy priorities he could potentially flip this otherwise dismal script the other issue is foreign policy and

returning the united states to its once uh you know preeminent place as leader of the free world or at least embracing that as an ambition and the reason i think that this is a potentially less contentious issue is that i think for most ordinary americans and maybe especially for trump's base they don't care so deeply about this issue but i think political elites do including many of those in the republican party who have been deeply unhappy with the instability and the precarity that trump's sort of

seemingly random tweet driven version of an america first foreign policy has given life to so i think hear clear very early very public signals about america's aspirations and what other nations can expect from the united states as an ally or as an adversary under a biden administration could go a long way i think decency as a person and credibility in foreign policy these are joe biden's two strongest suits as a person and as a politician so his successes on these two fronts could be a foundation for

successes elsewhere thank you uh and uh so we we are actually uh running out of time we have about uh 25 minutes so uh let's quickly uh turn to uh paul uh your views and and then uh yeah get to uh q and a's all right i'll try to be brief because we do of course want to hear uh people's questions and address those um uh i i'm gonna start also with the republican party uh because i think in order to understand what's going to be possible in american politics uh one has to start there uh and the future of trumpism if you want to

put it that way because um in the american political system whether you can expect any cooperation from the other party uh is a decisive question um especially with as close of balance as we have uh and so i i begin by recalling that when barack obama became president um with a clear majority um actually 60 seats in the senate it's kind of unimaginable now to think that that at that point democrats were able to win 60 seats in the senate the republican senate leader mitch mcconnell said that his top priority was to make barack

obama a one-term president and which was rational for him in many in many respects um the american political system creates um both the incentive for the minority to obstruct um and the capacity for the minority to obstruct and if they can make the president less popular they win right so um uh just watching the last just over the last day we've watched in the u.s i think for many people who care about the health of american democracy with great dismay as republican elected leaders amplified president trump's accusations

that the election was illegitimate and that includes a majority of leader mcconnell and the leading republican in the house kevin mccarthy retired republicans did not do that right um so george w bush came out with a congratulatory statement dan quayle who had been h.w bush's vice president came out with a congratulatory statement and said that there was no fraud and of course the last presidential candidate on the republican side mitt romney also did this um but very very few elected republicans have behaved in a

way that involved putting democracy and the capacity for the u.s to govern ahead of donald trump and their party they fanned the flames and i think this is quite revealing about what we can expect in the days ahead i don't think it's just uh that they want to um uh soothe the president's pride right i think it's that they believe that they benefit from being able to continue to mobilize their base they'll benefit in the georgia runoff elections if they can make their base so angry that they believe

that the election has been stolen from them right and again it's completely baseless right there is no evidence to support uh that anything remotely like this happened and in many ways is predictable completely predictable that president trump would do this right what was slightly less predictable and saddens me i must say is that so many elected republicans would go along because one they're they're terrified of what would happen if they challenge the base uh with donald trump you know amping things along and he's not going to go

away unless he goes to jail which is possible i think i think it's quite possible that he will ultimately end up going to jail but in the meantime he's going to amp up his base and he will turn that base against any republican who supports bipartisanship or just an acknowledgement that joe biden legitimately won the election so this creates an enormous challenge for president biden domestic legislation i think and most is going to be extraordinarily difficult it will be because it will require uh the agreement

of um of republicans in the senate uh and they have strong incentives to withhold that agreement to make the president look bad so that will be extremely difficult there are some things that a president can do through executive action uh you know many of trump's executive orders can be reversed on the first day the united states will rejoin the paris climate accord for example the muslim ban immigration ban will be repealed by executive order but even there a president their ability to act unilaterally is going to be limited by

a republican-dominated supreme court an increasingly ideologically conservative supreme court which is likely to be much more critical in its views of executive power when that executive power is wielded by joe biden instead of donald trump the one place where a president is likely to have considerable room to maneuver is in foreign policy their presence can do a lot uh unilaterally um and they're less subject to scrutiny from either congress or or from the courts the challenge there which tayu is

already alluding to i think is joe biden i think joe biden does have a lot of credibility among um countries that have traditionally been allies with the united states but i think those allies are going to have to ask themselves as the trump experience has shown uh how much can we rely on the credibility of the united states right we may be able to rely on the honesty and accept the interest and cooperation that comes from the person who is currently the leader but do we believe that he can credibly

commit to things that we can expect the united states to follow through on five years from now or ten years from now um and building an alliance in the absence of that kind of confidence is extraordinarily difficult even without all the other challenges that the international community faces thank you thank you paula i think it's almost a consensus between uh you and you and tegu this it's uh really a doom and gloom uh projection of uh the biden uh administration for the next four years but the one bright side is foreign

policy you can you can um obviously go over the partisan politics so um i think uh you know i have a long list of questions from the audience and and actually most of them are foreign policy issues uh i know uh you know poland and tegu uh do not squarely uh work on foreign policy american foreign policy but i mean you can i mean the audience really want to hear from you so uh there are um several uh questions uh i think we have to uh do this first and then if uh time remains go back to uh pyongyang

for uh further questions to you and and comments as well i think uh the u.s policy toward korea um alliance issue and also what it be uh the new administration's north korean policy these two questions are most frequent questions that i have so uh uh if you want to who's going to first go first on uh you know biden's uh foreign policy toward korean peninsula i'm guessing you're probably in a better better position to talk about that well i think a lot will depend on um first who uh trump uh who biden picks for his

transition team and then who he winds up picking for important uh cabinet uh positions but i think the the default would be to assume that it will be more like uh the us approach to foreign policy visa v both south korea and north korea that characterize the obama years uh and possibly also the the clinton years than what we've seen over the last four years you know i think at the same time i think there has been substantial momentum towards thawing north korea's relations with south korea and with the united states

that might be an opportunity to do something slightly different but i think i would say my default hypothesis would be that it would be very much in line with the obama presidency's view towards uh south korea as an ally um i um i got a the question uh it's about uh kamala harris what would be her role as a vice president in in the upcoming uh i mean in in the government and what type of issues will she uh take care of uh and also how popular she is in the nationwide um so that so yes yeah i think

i think we don't know yet i i assume that she would be it won't be a situation like with obama and biden where i think biden devoted a lot of his energies towards foreign policy while the president at least initially focused on the domestic agenda i mean i think you know biden had tremendous experience in foreign policy um and i think you know harris's uh strengths are more on um on the domestic side um and of course there's a challenge there because um you know the domestic agenda is going to be really

really constrained um unless uh the georgia senate race turn turns out differently than we think that it is likely to do i mean i think one thing to keep an eye on and in addition to vice president harris um her background as a prosecutor and as attorney general in california uh who who biden chooses as his attorney general um is going to be quite significant i think because um they're this is most we're nearing the end of the most corrupt administration in american history um i think that's i think we know that even before there's

more sustained investigation of it um and um obviously in a deeply polarized country uh it is going to be really challenging to figure out how the administration wants to handle that how they want to do it in such a way that criminality and corruption is punished rather than rewarded but that it doesn't seem like some kind of vendetta um and so i think harris's advice on that um would would probably play a really important role in the administration given her experience and of course the other thing is she is

in many ways she is um she embodies the party's future for the reasons that that tagu was talking about before and i think that her role in in outreach communication mobilization um to younger voters and to to people of color in the us that's going to be that's going to be important part how that's going to be connected to policy is less clear to me but i think that's going to be a really important part of her role question one question can i really quickly just add to what paul said uh i i'll go out on a limb and make

a prediction about camallaris's initial role which is there are two really important areas where i think a president biden will have to show a demonstrated interest even if you can't make any progress uh in terms of legislation or policy and those are criminal justice reform and reform to our electoral system uh in terms of voting rights and so on and so i would predict that uh president biden will set up some sort of presidential initiative to investigate those issues uh more deeply until he can pull more political

capital together to try to do something legislatively and kamala harris is the natural person to lead those initiatives the one other thing i'll say really quickly is i'm a lot more uh well i don't know if i'm a lot more optimistic i'm a lot less pessimistic than paul is about our ability to win the two georgia senate races okay so here is the question uh what are um the most well two three uh pressing problems that uh president elect biden will face between now and his inauguration between now and the inauguration yes

so i just want to so just quickly following up on on teku's comment when i i mean i when i am pessimistic about georgia in the sense that i think it's a less less likely that they win than that they lose um but maybe you're more optimistic than that um it is worth underscoring that um the foreign observers are going to want to really watch those races because as i tried to emphasize at the beginning were democrats to win those races we would be in a very different world now 50 50 with the vice president breaking a tie

is still not great and i read just before we started this program i read that joe manchin the democratic senator from west virginia had announced that he would not support the elimination of the filibuster in the senate right the rule which allows minor a minority of 41 to block that he would not support a reform to that even if democrats won those two seats in georgia so that basically that takes filibuster reform off the table and that's a big deal um at least initially it takes off the table but you would be able to do

some very significant things and i i i see the you know they've been they've been signposting what the main things that they want to uh focus on right which is um uh so there's so i don't think there's any question about what their priority where they see the problems uh the pandemic uh is uh is job one um and it is i think they realize that without a better plan for dealing with the pandemic they will not be able to get the economy going again and there is a place where the administration actually has some

autonomy right so and he can do a lot um in the next couple of months to get ready they've already got a team in place that was announced today um so so that's one uh economic reform economic recovery following from that there they're going to need more help from congress racial justice uh taku was just talking about some things that could be initiated that they'll get going on uh right away so that they can hit their ground going and the last is climate change uh and there again there are things that

a president can do even without the cooperation of congress uh the environmental protection agency is a powerful agency uh they can pursue significant policies uh having to do with climate change the challenge there though is that the supreme court is looming and i think it is quite it is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which following in obama's footsteps abide in administration crafts and implements ambitious regulations with respect to climate change only to see them gutted or struck down

in a couple of years by a conservative supreme court thank you um yeah we have some times left so uh professor zone do you have questions and comments uh you're muted unmute please okay i have several questions very quick questions and any one of you can answer my question the first one is that you know some republican readers including you know senate majority leader mitch mcconnell is very reluctant to and to say congratulations uh on to you know uh president-elect joe biden is it because he really really

believe that this election is fraud or is it because he's fearful of president donald trump's response or revenge that's my first question and the second question is that what this is a this is this is a question uh from me not necessarily as a professor for one of the korean citizens i'm very curious about that what would be the future role of donald trump once he's out of office he will become a second you know uh set of palin and just saying you know lots of things for a republican party and just a

physical way over his you know center will last several years from now and finally the other thing is that is there any possibility that you know joe biden would broaden jesus support beyond those who voted for him vice except successfully copied with you know covered you know pandemic situation that's my question great that was a great question you want me to take a step or do you want to go first well let me let me just talk about mcconnell i can let me do mcconnell real quickly i'll let you let you

uh take the other two they are great they are great questions um i think it has less to do um with fear of donald trump and it has to do with fear of trumpism and also recognizing um that he gains an advantage um from um angering the base right and i think in many ways is actually something this was a central part of the argument that jacob hacker and i made in this book let them eat tweets is at the republican party over the a long period of time well before donald trump arrived had found that um allying with

groups who could mobilize outrage um much of it linked to racial resentment um was a way to stoke political support among those who were receiving nothing from republican economic policies and but the problem is or a big part of there's a kind of frankenstein's monster element to this right which is that once you've created this outrage machine you can't really control it anymore and of course a conservative media fox news and so on is a big big part of this and so i think mitch mcconnell could quite reasonably think

that not supporting these baseless accusations of an illegitimate election would fracture the party would lead to um you know fury on the right wing of the party um in a way that actually would potentially cost republicans the elections in georgia right so uh so again as they have so many times in the past and in a way that is i think deeply deeply damaging to our political system they have chosen um to amplify things in the pursuit of narrow immediate interest even though it's very costly for our

political system thank you thank you sure i mean i would i would add to what paul said uh one thing about mcconnell and and the republican party in power today which is that it is unrecognizable from the republican party pre-newt gingrich 1994 and really what's happened to one of the two major parties in a global superpower is that a sort of extremist fringe element of the republican party all the way from from the extreme right over about a decade period has essentially occupied the center of the

republican party you know mcconnell is affiliated with the tea party movement so was uh mark meadows sowers mick mulvaney so are all these people who are currently viewed as the top brass the top leadership of the republican party and i have a quote here that i want to read from john boehner who was summarily ousted from his role as house majority leader when he was at the head of uh republicans in congress boehner said of the tea party they can't tell you what they're for they can tell you everything that

they're against they're anarchists they want total chaos tear it all down and start over that's where their mindset is and if that's true and that's what's occupied the center of the republican party nobody should expect responsible party behavior from republican party leaders denouncing the actions of trump or declaring the election to be legitimate because trump is the perfect vessel for their political ambitions um in terms of what trump does in the future i think it's really i mean it's hard to tell but i i think

one thing to be fair to trump the person if i can actually say those words is i think it's too easy to think of trump as this sort of monstrous political outsider who came in and destroyed all our social and political institutions i think the country was ready for somebody like that and once trump stepped into that role it becomes endogenous i think he's really fed off of the amount the kind of adulation almost cut-like adulation he's gotten from his base and that becomes like a drug i think the

more of it i mean just think about the fact that his first plan in response to challenging the election beyond you know setting his lawyers off to michigan and pennsylvania and so on is to have another big rally so i think you know whatever trump does i think he's gonna have to continue to feed that need which i can very quickly pivot to say why i'm more optimistic about georgia i think the question you have to ask about georgia is will trump basically be able to look beyond his own political interests or his own personal

interests and do some campaigning in georgia for the good of the party i don't think he can i don't think he will i think he will be too much wallowing in his defeat in the 2020 election and if that is the case i don't think the republican party turnout in georgia is going to be anything like the democratic party turnout in georgia which is why i think that there are reasons to be optimistic about those two senate races okay uh thank you so much i think uh yeah we are uh we are on time so exactly uh on time so uh

i i will have to finish now um i don't think i need uh any further concluding remarks uh summarizing you know today's seminar because um it really is a great great seminar this time again uh thank you so much uh for uh you know paul tegu and pyongyang um it's uh again extremely interesting and intriguing and enlightening um you know time for for me and eai and and the audience so once again thank you so much thank you and i'm thinking of uh inviting you again if two years four years whenever knows so

once again thank you so much and um i think it's the end of the seminar okay thank you so much thank you so much to see you again and stay healthy thank you so much