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- [00:01]
Henry Blodgett
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- [00:16]
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- [00:37]
John Harris
History is not moved by reasonable people. It's moved by people in the grip of really powerful ideas and passions and hatreds and ideals and enthusiasms. So the notion of this kind of rationalist, sensible center, I think it may be out of step with how history gets made.
- [00:58]
Henry Blodgett
Most Americans actually don't obsess about politics all day. We just live our lives. Once a year or so we vote. Sometimes the elections go our way, sometimes they don't. Life goes on. But these days, it seems we're told we're in a fight to the death with our fellow Americans. A civil war with everything but the shooting. In the view of this American, at least, this situation is terrible. At best, it's a waste of time and energy. At worst, it's a national tragedy. I wanted to understand better how we got here, so I called my friend John Harris, the editor in chief of Politico. John is one of the most experienced political analysts in our country. He was a Washington Post reporter for two decades. Then he founded Politico, one of the only political news sites that is not a cheering section for one team or the other. In addition to writing books and columns, John has been POLITICO's EIC for almost two decades. He's brilliant, he's a great guy, and he's going to help us solve our polarization problem. Here's my conversation with John. John, welcome. So great to see you. And in the interest of full disclosure, let me tell our listeners and viewers that you and I have been friends for more than a decade. We used to be colleagues together at Axel Springer, the big German media company that bought both your company Politico, and mine, Business Insider. And over the years, you and your Politico colleagues have treated me to things like your amazing mid Alp party in Davos, where you take everybody up in the cable car and then you let us sled all the way down. And I do have to say that was an extraordinary experience. So thank you. Great to have you.
- [02:39]
John Harris
It's good to be with you, Henry.
- [02:41]
Henry Blodgett
Terrific all right, let's jump right in. So is it just me, or is the United States more politically polarized than it has been in at least half a century?
- [02:51]
John Harris
I suppose. I think the word. There's certain words, polarization, tribalization, so forth, that get used quite commonly and bandied about, but there's not always precision, I think, in a historical sense, of what those words mean. Are we polarized? Yes. How does that compare to the polarization of the 1960s? There's nobody dying by thousands a week as they were in Vietnam. There was a spasm of violence around George Floyd in 2020, but there's not routine urban riots, as there were through much of the 60s. Nobody's taking over universities and blowing up math departments as happened then. So I guess my point is that this country has always, in some sense, been polarized. Our history has been marked by intense ideological, class, cultural divisions, sometimes taking on a violent character, obviously most prominently in the Civil War. So that raises the question of, well, is this just a familiar phenomenon we're going through now in the Trump era, or is there something different in character? I would say there is a difference in character. I think that one important part of that difference is very close to us. The way media, a convergence of media and technology, has changed the way we all of us see the world and react to the world and identify with different groups and different values. I do think there is, in some sense, a polarization industry now, people who benefit from, profit from the kind of divisions. And there is this paradox. Hopefully, that paradox will be reconciled in time. But for now, this wondrous technology that's driving our lives and influencing media, but really influencing almost every dimension of life. It's both incredibly powerful symbol of modernity, but it also has this ability to send us back to our most primitive selves in ways that the cavemen, a cave woman would find familiar. You're going to bash some neighboring tribe with rocks before they do the same to you. And I do think that's different than the polarization of the 60s, the 1930s, in that it seems to have a more psychological character rather than a kind of, strictly speaking, material character. It's over. One side is pro union, the other side's pro management, or one side is opposed to civil rights, as in the 60s. The other power powerfully in favor. In some sense. We're. Those were about real, tangible things, and increasingly, not that we're not arguing about real things now, but I think there's a powerful psychic dimension to it. And I think what's different is this is the technology and the industry and the economic incentives behind it.
- [05:41]
Henry Blodgett
So I want to dive into all of that. But this show is about solutions. And so the idea is that hopefully there's a way forward where we return to an environment where we treat each other with a little more decency and respect and the goal isn't to divide and so forth. So before we get to that, you mentioned the 60s, the 30s, obviously the civil war. The country has come back from those cases. Civil war, it's because one side lost. But in the 30s and 60s we didn't devolve into a civil war. We came back from that. What happened that led us back from that peacefully?
- [06:15]
John Harris
Well, I think as your lead up suggests, there is there historically has been resolution to the big disputes resolution for that time, not for all time. Most of the big dividing themes in our country, race, class paramount above them, they're abiding. But the particular questions of an era do get resolved. I think that's what were waiting for coming out of the Trump era. I would note that for the past generation issues tend to have a recurring quality. You know, in the 60s there was a big debate over the civil Rights Acts, but then once they're passed, they're fundamentally resolved. And you know, nobody was arguing about Medicare within five years really of it passing in 1965. But you know, we're still having big debates about Obamacare 14, almost 15 years after that passed. So there does. And I think it goes back to this, this kind of complex that I described that the issues tend to, to stay alive rather than being resolved. I'm kind of a short term pessimist, long term optimist. And I think it is because, you know, the great strength of democracy is its capacity for self criticism and self correction. And I think we're going through an enormous debate about fundamental values and the division will in due course be followed by consensus.
- [07:46]
Henry Blodgett
And so we're going to come back to your short term pessimism and long term optimism. But let me just use you. You've been watching this and analyzing the United States for so long. I just want to ask some more very basic background questions, which is one of the things when you look at other countries that's different about the United States is we have a two party system. And in a two party system it is very easy to declare one party good and the other party evil. And the two fight and then one win or at least takes over for a while. Why do we have this system and more importantly, why can't we Change it. There was a moment a couple months ago when Elon Musk basically got excommunicated from the Trump administration where he said, I'm going to start a new party. And everybody laughed and the conversation was dead in a week. Why is that so tough? And why don't we have a system like many other countries where there are many parties?
- [08:39]
John Harris
Well, the premise of your question is obviously quite right, Henry, in that there's been a two party system in the US that's been really enduring. I would qualify that point, though, in a couple of different ways. Historically, the reason the two party system was so enduring is they were broad based coalitions that had to reconcile lots of different constituencies. And so almost by definition, they had to be really adaptive. Both major parties would have big geographic diversity, they would have particular constituencies, agriculture, labor, an affinity with Main street businesses and so forth. And so they were naturally kind of homogenizing instruments. I don't know that that's been true of parties for the past generation. They have much more ideological homogeneity within them. They're much more conformist. And the parties really do have fundamentally different worldviews. They're not really working hard to bal diverse coalitions. They're saying, you're with us or you're without us. And the other thing I would say is, although we haven't seen successful third party movements, usually the reason that's true is that the one party or the other kind of co opts that third party energy and is responsive to it. Perhaps that's what's happened with Trump. I do think he's effectively a third party movement that took over the Republican Party. If you look at the MAGA orthodoxy today and compare it with, say, George W. Bush's the Republican Party 20 years ago, you'd have a huge difference in views of the world and how interventionist America should be. Huge difference over trade so that the parties do change and they can change pretty dramatically, but the two party system remains intact. I think there's just big structural advantages from the way our elections are organized, the way money is raised, that tend to reinforce the notion of two major parties, even as those parties change quite a lot over time. And I'd argue quite dramatically with real dramatic swiftness. In the Trump era, we've seen the Republican Party transform. The reaction to Trumpism has led to also significant difference in the character of the Democratic Party. By no means is it Bill Clinton's party anymore, may not even be much of Barack Obama's in my view.
- [11:04]
Henry Blodgett
And why is it that it's so difficult to create a new party because I think right now, I think a lot of Americans feel like they've been left behind. They're not really in the center of either party. We saw a new political publication created called the Free Press, which seemed aimed right at that center, the homeless center, on both the right and left, not one side or the other. Why is it that a guy like Elon Musk, who's the richest guy in the world and has enormous influence, why can't he create a party and fund it?
- [11:35]
John Harris
I don't think it's technically impossible. Right. We saw a generation ago now, but, you know, Ross Perot could have won, plausibly won, the 1992 presidential election when they're then, like now, the great disfection with the general thrust of politics and the people's sense of whether the country's on the right track or the wrong track. You know, his idiosyncrasies made that not possible for him to actually win. But he did win 20% of the vote back then. I've always basically overlaps with my national political reporting career, and so I've always wondered whether that energy could return. And effectively, it did return with Trump. As I say, he's a third party movement. Your notion, Barry Weiss's notion of can't somebody represent the radical center? All I would say is that it is to some extent a kind of enduring fantasy of our crowd that thinks politics is too driven by special interests, too prone to extremism, and is held hostage with activists who don't represent a kind of a rational center. I can nurture the same sort of fantasy that lots of people do. Wouldn't it be cool if some really powerful, charismatic creature of the center emerge? I think there's a reason it doesn't. And it may be that the kind of fantasies of the sort of professional commentator, journalist, you know, sort of white collar public policy activist, the kind of people that are, we would know a lot of that are really broadly representative of the country and how it thinks and how it works fundamentally. Politics is ultimately, history is not moved by reasonable people. It's moved by people in the grip of really powerful ideas and passions and hatreds and ideals and enthusiasms. And so the notion of this kind of rationalist, technocratic, you know, sensible center, I think it may be out of step with how history gets made.
- [13:45]
Henry Blodgett
And so if the Democrats are to win another election, national election, I have a lot more questions about that. Is that. Is that what it will take? Will it take somebody like Trump, that charismatic, basically coming in and inspiring the whole party and winning over some of that center.
- [14:03]
John Harris
It might, or it might be somebody who moves the center by her or his power of argument. You know, the Republican Party of Gerald Ford and that brand of Republicans. It didn't change from the center. Ronald Reagan challenged it from what was then an ideological farpoint on the spectrum. Democrats have had the center. There'll be an argument from their opponents on this, but I just think in sort of objective terms, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, they didn't come from the extremes of their party. They were people who, intelligent, in a policy sense, disciplined folks who saw themselves as kind of trying to own a center. You know, the person who's more thoroughly redirected his party, of course, is Donald Trump. And he did it not by finding the center of the Republican Party at that time or trying to find a center of American politics. He did it by clearly staking out positions that at the time were not in the, were at one side of the spectrum of what lots of right thinking people regarded as legitimate. He changed the, the terms of the, the debate. You know, 20, 25 years ago, the establishment of both parties would, had much different views of free trade, of China, of immigration. You know, 10 years ago, the notion of AOC mayor like Mamdani, you know, we're at the end of 10 years ago, end of 2015, we were hearing from Bernie Sanders, but there was no appreciation that he would actually speak to a large segment of the Democratic Party. So I think Trumpism and the MAGA movement has actually changed the character of both parties, both in terms of what Republicans typically believe and the powerful ways that Democrats are reacting.
- [16:07]
Henry Blodgett
And do you think we will have another presidential election?
- [16:11]
John Harris
I do.
- [16:11]
Henry Blodgett
That is free and open, that will not simply result in President Trump remaining president.
- [16:18]
John Harris
I do. I think it would be hard for me to be, as I said, a long term optimist, that the country's really going to solve its problems. If I thought actually in the near term we would see elections called off. I know President Trump has big toys with this and publicly speculates on it seemingly as a way to troll the opposition. But I haven't so far seen evidence that that's really a genuine prospect.
- [16:44]
Henry Blodgett
Yes, he loves to troll. And interestingly, recently it was Steve Bannon, I think, who told the Economist that there is a plan and yes, there will be a third term. And President Trump himself denied it, said, no, I'm not allowed to do that.
- [16:57]
John Harris
Well, might his movement indulge that fantasy? In my view, because actually there's not a lot of evidence that this terrific energy, it's a powerful historical force as we've been talking about, but there's not a lot of evidence that that force can be directed, harnessed by anyone other than Donald Trump. In fact, we see all kinds of divisions within the MAGA movement that are just waiting for. The only thing that really keeps them from being sort of openly infected is President Trump's presence in office itself. So once you remove that, debates over the future of trade, Ukraine, both as an example in and of itself, but I think also as a proxy for a larger worldview view, a conversation about how interventions in the United States should be abroad, above all Israel and the fate of Israel. These are things in which the MAGA movement's got real divisions, ideological, cultural, generational divisions, and they're suppressed. Well, President Trump with his kind of cult of personality, it's very powerful within the Republican Party. But once you remove that, I'm not totally sure I see where this movement goes. It certainly would have to find an equivalent leader or have some major adaptation to a post Trump party. So anyway, it's not surprising that Steve Bannon might be speculating about that. He knows that President Trump is a singular figure. I would say the bigger challenge for the moment among Republicans is how to reckon with the fact that President Trump is simultaneously a great mobilizer of voters for him when he's on the ballot, but he's equally and perhaps even greater a mobilizer of people who dislike him, dislike his plans and agenda for the country. You know, we're in an era of politics that's more about in both parties, it's more about mobilizing your supporters rather than persuading people who might authentically be looking at weighing alternatives and could plausibly vote for either side. This was a mobilization era, not a persuasion era. People are dissatisfied. And if you look at the state where I'm in now, at Virginia, it wasn't just that the Democratic gubernatorial candidate kind of waltzed into office with a big margin. Republicans lost 13 seats to Democratic challengers. So that's a pretty. That tells you there's a lot of energy out there. And that energy would cause the Republicans big, big concern. Millions of players, one world, no lag.
- [19:53]
Henry Blodgett
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- [20:16]
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- [21:15]
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- [21:47]
Henry Blodgett
And so what? What lessons do you take away from the recent elections and the conversations within the Democrats a Democratic Party about hey, should we be a centrist party or should we have the Bernie AOC Mamdani wing of the party drive everything? What's the better way forward for the Democrats?
- [22:06]
John Harris
I think the right Democratic leader would render that debate. And to be honest, it's kind of a timeless debate. Different incarnations of it go back decades and fundamentally it's a version of what I just said is the pathway more about mobilizing voters, give them a choice, not an echo, and offer alternatives in really bold, vivid language or kind of blur differences and capture a center in the way that Bill Clinton did in the 1990s. It's a pretty familiar argument within the Democratic Party, taking on really a dramatic and urgent character now in the Trump era. But it seems to me that the right leader for the Democratic Party would render that kind of debate somewhat irrelevant. They would transcend it and in a way say yes and more than yes, but. But yes and to both wings of that party and unite them.
- [23:01]
Henry Blodgett
And are there people, as you look at the Democrats that are often talked about that you feel like have the charisma and ability to unify the party and then ultimately charm the country, they haven't demonstrated yet.
- [23:14]
John Harris
But that's okay, like the exam is not over. I think that's really why the next year ahead is going to be so interesting to watch, say Gavin Newsom, who I'm pretty sure would believe what I just said. Like I can actually appeal to the activist left and also a pretty radicalized center by doing what he's doing. I think there's all manner of other people who are going to say, look, it's my particular balance of my particular rhetorical formula or my particular way of speaking to a really agitated electorate that's going to win. But the answer is no. There haven't been such a figure really emerge. I don't think it's really going to become clear for a year and a half until somebody becomes the front runner.
- [23:57]
Henry Blodgett
And same question about the Republicans. If I hear you right, it sounds like you do not think President Trump will be president in 2029 and beyond. If so, are there obvious heir apparents and are we likely to hear from that person the exact same message and beliefs or President Trump is out of the picture. Might somebody who used to be perceived as more reasonable or centrists or more traditional return to their own views?
- [24:29]
John Harris
Well, Henry, if we have to answer the question you asked today, I think you'd have to say JD Vance is clearly the heir apparent of the Republican Party and the inheritor of the MAGA movement. That's today. We're not going to elect a new president for three more years. And then there's gonna be a lot of intervening events in between that. I know we had a story in Politico the other day that Marco Rubio, who's often mentioned as somebody with a future in Republican politics, had said that he wouldn't expect to run. He's told associates that he wouldn't expect to run for president. He'd expect to support JD Vance if he runs. The big intervening events, of course, I'd say the most obvious one is the midterm elections next year. And if that were to show that the Republican brand is in big trouble because of Trump's second term, that might change those calculations. And there would be voices say, look, we need to do something different. We have properly for the past year been talking about the deep problems of the Democratic brand. And they did show those problems were evident in 2024. The route among for rural, non college educated voters. That's been an ongoing generation long trend, but it reached a New Peak in 2024 as formerly Democratic leaning constituencies were now solidly behind President Trump. The erosion among minority voters in favor of President Trump. So the Democratic brand has got huge problems. Yes, true. And I think you could see if you extrapolated these election the results of these elections from a week ago forward into 2026 and we'd all be talking about the problems of the Republican brand would be equal to the challenges of the Democratic brand. So, you know, it's one reason politics is fun. Nothing stands still. I'm always a little bit of a skeptic these days, having fallen into the trap so many times in the past of doing this kind of extrapolation. You know, after George W. Bush won reelection despite an unpopular war in 2004, there was all this journalistic and political science commentary. Actually the Republicans have figured out a way to sort of lock on to a majority of the electorate. They might be in power for a generation and obviously that turned out to be bull. They didn't even end up losing the midterms immediately following that President Obama elected in 2008. I remember at that time President Obama' ability to in hyper detail to use technology to identify individual voters and mobilize them. This Democratic sort of technological and mobilization advantage might endure for the next several cycles. It didn't even endure for one cycle. Massive blowout in 2010 in the midterm elections and President Obama had to work hard to to beat mitt Romney in 2012. So none of these advantages for the past generation or more proved to be enduring. We're in a highly fluid moment in our politics. It used to be party, a change of control happened once every generation or two. Now it happens frequently every couple of cycles. And so this radical instability of our politics, it's gone on for now a generation. We don't know when that ends but I think but it's worth being a little bit detached from exaggerated claims on either side.
- [28:15]
Henry Blodgett
And you know J.D. vance very well. You've watched his evolution over time, as have I. I would say he's incredibly brilliant. He seems to have evolved quite a bit over the last 10 years and is now has a megaphone preaching the Donald Trump doctrine. If he were suddenly handed the reins of the country and the party, do you think he would stay where he is? Is that the key to staying in power if you're j or could he remoderate, for lack of a better word?
- [28:44]
John Harris
Well, historically the challenge for vice presidents and they don't always meet that challenge well is to be forward looking and not be seen as a representative of the simply of the administration they served and more broadly representative of the past. It's tall order. Al Gore couldn't pull it off 25 years ago. Kamala Harris had a very short window in which to do so in 2024 and she failed. So I think JD Vance would have that challenge. He's got some significant advantages. He's young, he's really smart and he's really articulate. I don't think the Democrats would have a hard time not acknowledging that if they were just to go back and look at that debate a year ago against Tim Walls, who at the time was riding huge wave of positive publicity and enthusiasm from Democrats. And Vance just won that debate. He proved, I think, that he's really a highly protean figure. He can adapt to different circumstances as he perceives them. So I feel sure he would attempt to do that. So he's gonna be formidable. Of course, he's got some big disadvantages too. He probably will take the Trump baggage. He's not, at least in the polls I've seen he's not an overwhelmingly popular figure. And it might well be that the country's really ready to move on. Certainly a lot of voters in these off year elections in Virginia and New Jersey were ready to move on.
- [30:17]
Henry Blodgett
If the Democrats were to win the next election, do you think that the way of governing would be to basically give it back the same way we've just had for these four years where it seems to be constantly pushing the envelope for law and getting the enemies back and so forth, or do you think that they would do what Democrats in the past seem to have done and have been called out as weak for, which is try to be moderate?
- [30:44]
John Harris
Henry, it's such a good question and I think we don't really get the answer until a Democrat, not just we see how they run in 26 and especially in 28, but actually if they were to win how they govern. It is hard for me to see why a president of any party would want to voluntarily surrender the presidential claims and the power that President Trump has claimed for himself in key instances so far been validated by the courts in doing But I don't really see how you easily go back. Is a Democrat elected in taking office in January of 2029. Is she or he going to say, okay, I'm going to go back to the old norms with respect to FBI director, this is supposed to be an apolitical and the person's going to stay in office 10 years, why would they do that? Of course they're going to say, well, President Trump made that a more partisan position. I'm going to do the same. Is somebody going to go back and say, well, the old way of sort of respecting the independent autonomy of regulatory agencies, the fcc, the securities and Exchange Commission, dozens of others. I'm going to go back to the historic norms. Are they going to say no? Like, the nature of this office has been changed by the Trump years and we're in a new era? To me, it's a really, really interesting question. You know, beyond those questions of sort of basic governing questions, there's lots of symbolic things. Like if the ballroom gets built named after Trump, do you tear it down, I promise to tear it down on day one, or do you say, oh, to hell with it, we're not going to have a backward looking argument, just use the damn ballro. To me, that's a nice kind of, maybe inconsequential, but nice sort of physical manifestation of the broader issue that we're talking about that you raise in your question. Like go back to norms. Go back to what are those norms? Go back to what?
- [33:02]
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- [33:31]
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- [34:42]
John Harris
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- [35:13]
Henry Blodgett
Well, one more question about history and norms, which is that it seems like Congress used to be a little bit more powerful. And one of the complaints you hear from a lot of Democrats now, in particular Democrats, is that Congress has just completely abdicated and rubber stamps anything that Donald Trump wants and so forth. Could Congress suddenly rise up and say, hey, wait a minute, the system wasn't designed this way. We want some of our power back?
- [35:41]
John Harris
Well, you're certainly going to see that when the Congress is controlled by a different party than occupies the White House. There's no question you'll see that. The question is, as we're in the situation now where one party controls really all three branches of government, both the executive and the legislative branch officially, and certainly a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. So you do see the breakdown in these sort of traditional institutional levers of accountability. They don't work, haven't been working in, in the present instance, you know the old cliche about Democrats fall in love but Republicans fall in a line, I do think there is at least some truth to that. I would see it if there's a Democratic president, a Democratic Congress. It's just not been the historic nature of the Democratic Party for people to bow even to a president of their party. I think a Democratic president would have way more difficulty kind of intimidating his or her own party the way President Trump has basically intimidated his party into obedience.
- [36:54]
Henry Blodgett
So assuming that as an American, you would like to return to a less heated, more respectful debate existence that we're our acknowledgement that we're all Americans and we have a lot in common and why are we fighting all the time? What would have to happen for us to get there? Is that just a pendulum swings back, back eventually, or is it emergence of somebody who wants to try to unite rather than divide? What do we have to do to.
- [37:21]
John Harris
Get back to that? Well, I mean, first off, the things you mentioned, Henry, sure, I would find those things attractive, but those are primarily stylistic signatures of a certain brand of politics that you, you're respectful, you don't use the language of contempt. If you lose an election, you Acknowledge it. But those kind of stylistic traits, those are really secondary to what politics is supposed to be all about, which at the end of the day is like solving big national problems and setting the course for the country. The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. He said, Politics is about the search for remedy ultimately, and I do think that's true. And what are the big problems, the big choices facing the country? Historically, one party has gotten an advantage in that and seen as more credible on the big questions facing the country. Democrats were in power most of the time for a couple of generations because they were seen as winning this historic debate about the size of the federal government and the modern regulatory and welfare state. It wasn't until Ronald Reagan came along and said, I disagree, that Republicans had a. They didn't dominate the government fully the way Democrats did in the wake of fdr, but they definitely had a profound. That generation of Republicans had a profound influence. I think President Trump has changed the terms of debate, as I mentioned earlier, on such issues as trade protectionism, tariffs. It might well be that those have an enduring effect in both parties. I think more important than, hey, can we get along and be respectful? Is whose fundamental vision about the direction of the country and the specific policy recommendations that would drive that vision of the country. Those have to prevail. And sometimes that's messy. It's not always polite and respectful. But I think that's the key, I don't think, in the stylistic ways that you mention and that I similarly would find attractive, I don't think that happens until the. The country reaches a new consensus about sort of what we're about. As long as we're in this period of very tight, narrow division and also intense, intensely emotional division. I don't think you're going to see politics be civil or respectful. You're going to see more of the language of contempt, which I think pervades our politics today. As I say, that mindset of contempt is in fact driven by powerful forces, above all technology and the kind of a contempt industrial complex that benefits from it and people profit on it. But beneath those factors and those incentives, I do think there's substantive, big, substantive issues at play. People really on all sides of the spectrum, the polls show it unambiguously, are uncomfortable with the direction of the country. There is not substantively a national consensus. Over time there will be. But until then, you're going to have a really divided, inflamed, infected national body politic.
- [40:47]
Henry Blodgett
And there are a lot of issues that people obviously are incredibly passionate about at Least in some of the analyses that I saw of the latest election, what really affected a lot of the swing voters who switched from Biden to Trump seemed to be inflation and the impact on families and interest rates going up and gas and groceries and that ultimately. So it was an economic issue that really drove a lot of voters to just say, you know what change, got to see something else. Is it likely, do you think, that the economy remains that powerful going forward and whichever party can make a better argument about their ability to fix it will have a big advantage with the swing voters?
- [41:35]
John Harris
Yes, I think it will. And because the concerns about the economy, obviously they've got a short term dimension and I'm really pissed off about the price of gas or the price of groceries. But beneath that short term dimension, I think they're really driven by a powerful long term dimension in that people feel that their prospects in life are eroding, that the question of is each succeeding generation better than the one before? A lot of people are giving negative answers to that. I think that pessimistic outlook is driven by some genuine real life, real world factors. You've got a generation, couple of generation long, a pattern of deindustrialization. I think that's really what drives the, the non college educated vote. So it Senate from being historically Democratic to now historically Republican. Ohio, no longer a swing state, solid Republican. As recently as the Clinton years, he won West Virginia twice. It's outlandish to think of a Democrat winning West Virginia. So those are long term economic factors driving that change. What we don't know, but it's certainly arresting to think about, is the next wave of economic innovation, specifically AI? And what's that going to do to the economic prospects of a segment of the population that is typically college educated, that they are planning to be lawyers, journalists, physicians, researchers that had ambitions of themselves as successful white collar careers. Is that really challenged by AI? And if so, what is the effect of that economic dislocation and the pervasive anxiety that flows from dislocation, that's going to be a really, really potent force. So these economic questions, I think they're going to be center irrespective of like, hey, eggs are a little cheaper this month than they were last month. Those surface factors matter, but the reason they matter is that they're proxies for really deep fundamental underlying issues that I think are quite properly leaving a lot of people feeling anxious, agitated, in many cases aggrieved.
- [43:55]
Henry Blodgett
All right, John, so this has been terrific. Thank you. I want to come back to something you said earlier that was very striking, which is you say I am a short term pessimist but a long term optimist. So let's hear your forecasting. Where are we headed? Why are you a pessimist? How long is that going to last? And then what does this optimistic view of the future look like?
- [44:13]
John Harris
Well, the short term pessimism is I just don't see you have a country how it meets its problems through the politics of contempt in which you have invective really replacing honest argument just doesn't seem like an attractive way to live or an effective way to solve problems. I think it's going to burn itself out, but it's got a lot of energy and I think that is one reason I do feel like I'm kind of a short term pessimist about the country. The reason I'm a long term optimist is it does burn itself out. Politics is ultimately at the end of the day, as I said, it's about the search for remedy. Democracy is a superior system to most of the others around the world. And we see those examples authoritarian regimes, kind of a backward looking, nostalgic authoritarian regime out of Russia and other places in Eastern Europe, a kind of futuristic surveillance and control driven brand of authoritarianism out of China. In the middle you've got the United States and Western Europe still kind of liberal pluralistic democracies muddling along with deeply dissatisfied publics. But for all the dissatisfaction, our system is superior in part because democracy is the best vehicle for self critique and therefore self correction and for solving big historic problems. I think that's why I'm optimistic. And it's not a naive optimism, it's really justified by history.
- [45:53]
Henry Blodgett
That is a great note to end on, John. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us and have a wonderful.
- [45:59]
John Harris
Enjoyed it, Henry. Thank you.
- [46:02]
Henry Blodgett
Solutions is produced by Meghan Cunane. Jim Mackle is our video editor. Our theme music is by Trackademics. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Thanks for listening to Solutions from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm your host Henry Blodgett. We'll see you soon.
- [46:25]
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