TRIGGERnometry - Will Trump Win Again？

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a

00:00:10.140 show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant and

00:00:15.700 returning guest today is a professor of politics at the University of Kent and the author of

00:00:20.600 National Populism, A Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. Matt Goodwin, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:26.240 Thanks for having me. I did that all from memory. You must be impressed.

00:00:29.260 That's great.

00:00:29.760 He's really not impressed.

00:00:30.640 Second time.

00:00:31.360 It's your second time

00:00:31.960 of saying it.

00:00:33.100 Third time.

00:00:33.660 Third time.

00:00:34.140 Third time.

00:00:34.380 Believe it or not.

00:00:34.820 It's good to have you back, Matt.

00:00:35.980 It's great to be here.

00:00:36.760 I watch every episode.

00:00:39.140 I do.

00:00:39.720 I'm such a big fan.

00:00:40.360 I mean it.

00:00:41.380 I sent some episodes

00:00:42.300 to my mother as well.

00:00:43.200 That's how impressive

00:00:43.880 I think the show is.

00:00:44.760 Well, that's very kind.

00:00:45.540 And actually,

00:00:45.960 if someone of your caliber

00:00:47.340 and stature watches our show,

00:00:48.820 I think that's a positive.

00:00:50.580 I would urge everybody

00:00:51.500 to watch Trigonometry.

00:00:52.920 Well, they already are, mate.

00:00:54.420 So anyway,

00:00:55.060 it's good to have you back.

00:00:56.340 The last time we had you on,

00:00:57.740 And it was one of, I think, one of our best episodes that we've ever done.

00:01:01.380 It was in the wake of the election in 2019 and December 20th.

00:01:06.040 No pressure, by the way.

00:01:07.180 I think it was two days after the election.

00:01:08.520 It was literally two days.

00:01:10.200 I don't think I'd slept, actually.

00:01:11.620 I think it was just straight from crunching the election to your studio.

00:01:15.980 Really?

00:01:16.440 Yeah.

00:01:16.700 Well, how things haven't changed.

00:01:18.020 You were just saying you haven't slept very much.

00:01:19.780 I haven't, no.

00:01:20.580 No.

00:01:21.180 But you're working hard, and we'll get into some of the work that you're doing.

00:01:24.240 But at that time, we were talking about the collapse of the Labour Party, the problems on the left.

00:01:32.020 Now, we've got another fairly important election coming up in November in the United States.

00:01:37.140 And that's why we're so delighted to have you back, because I think they always say this is the most important election.

00:01:44.920 It kind of is, isn't it?

00:01:46.980 It's a highly consequential election for lots of different reasons.

00:01:50.000 I think on the one hand, it's a referendum on Trump, the guy that, of course, we all thought wouldn't win.

00:01:57.100 But it's also going to tell us ultimately whether liberalism, mainstream politics, has a reply to populism.

00:02:04.900 And that essentially is what November is about.

00:02:07.100 When you say sort of self-deprecatingly, it's something we all said wouldn't happen.

00:02:10.680 You actually tried to get people to recognize that Trump wouldn't be elected in 2016.

00:02:15.120 Well, I wrote a piece explaining why I thought Trump would win.

00:02:20.000 And I mean, it's an interesting story, I suppose. I used to write quite regularly for the New York Times and mainly on stuff about Europe.

00:02:27.940 And then during the summer of 2016, I thought that people were obsessing about the national polls and they were losing sight of the state level polls.

00:02:37.360 And they were losing sight of the groups that were more likely than than others to turn out, in my opinion.

00:02:43.320 And fast forward to the election, that's kind of what happened.

00:02:46.680 Anyway, I sent that piece to the New York Times. That's why I thought Trump would win.

00:02:50.000 um it wasn't published because at that point we were dealing with you know 99 implied chance of

00:02:55.820 a trump victory sent it to politico who did publish it um and uh i think at that point it

00:03:02.820 was very much about trying to learn from the experiences of britain and learn about what

00:03:07.420 what was the message of the referendum that actually there are some fundamental problems

00:03:12.240 with the way that we poll certain groups and there are some issues with how we interpret

00:03:16.740 people's enthusiasm in elections. And that played out, obviously, to Trump's benefit.

00:03:22.740 So I think, you know, 2016 was, you know, the big shock. And since then, I know we're going to talk

00:03:27.480 about it. But since then, obviously, we've learned a great deal, too, not only about Trumpism, but

00:03:32.560 also about how you respond to somebody like Trump. And we're seeing Trump now, he seems to be on the

00:03:38.420 back foot, doesn't he, in terms of the polls as a result of COVID? Was it very much the case that

00:03:43.420 if COVID had never happened, he would have absolutely stormed the election? Would it

00:03:47.280 have been a bit more complicated? I think Trump would have won without COVID. I think it would

00:03:51.920 have been fairly comfortable. The reason I say that, firstly, is if you look at the polling

00:03:57.100 on the economy, he had a significant lead, even at the beginning of this year.

00:04:03.120 He also, we tend to forget this now, he also has a fairly clear record and list of things that he

00:04:10.240 can point to for his supporters, you know, standing up to China, building part of the

00:04:14.560 wall, tax breaks, judges, all of that kind of stuff that Republicans want to see. He has

00:04:20.580 delivered for some of his key groups of voters. But I think also at the same time, the Democrats

00:04:29.440 have focused overwhelmingly on the anti-Trump message and haven't yet, at least in my view,

00:04:36.120 articulated the pro-Democrat message. And I think that's symbolic of a deeper problem within our

00:04:40.740 politics, particularly in the West, which is that liberalism has not really renewed itself

00:04:46.860 in an instrumental, positive way. It's very good at saying why its opponents are evil, racist,

00:04:54.840 ignorant, etc. It still has not renewed its core message to voters, i.e. why is it relevant

00:05:03.060 today? What does it want to achieve? What's its vision for society? I mean, if you told me

00:05:07.680 or asked me today, what's Biden's vision for the United States, apart from it not involving Donald

00:05:14.400 Trump, I don't really know. Maybe there's a bit of stuff around clean energy, a bit of stuff about

00:05:19.860 making it easier to join unions, a bit of stuff about taxing high earners. What's the vision,

00:05:26.680 right? And I think that speaks to a deeper problem facing not only social democracy,

00:05:31.100 but facing liberals in general.

00:05:33.300 Well, we had Scott Adams on the show,

00:05:34.880 and he, in fact, said that he's never met a Biden fan.

00:05:38.520 And if you've never met a Biden fan,

00:05:40.520 there's plenty of Trump fans.

00:05:42.160 How is he possibly going to get elected?

00:05:44.940 Well, he'll get elected, if he does get elected,

00:05:49.040 through increased turnout among the key groups,

00:05:54.060 university graduates, African-Americans,

00:05:58.940 suburban voters, women.

00:06:01.900 And, you know, compared to Clinton at this point in 2016,

00:06:05.160 Biden is in a stronger position.

00:06:07.520 He is doing better in the polls nationally.

00:06:11.880 He's doing better in some swing states than Clinton was doing.

00:06:15.840 But I still think Trump has got a very good chance at the election.

00:06:21.420 If you drill down into some of those states, Florida, for example,

00:06:25.980 Trump is competitive.

00:06:27.200 I think Biden's having some real problems with Hispanic, Latino voters in some specific counties.

00:06:33.580 And I think the job numbers do matter.

00:06:37.000 You know, I don't agree with the narrative that it's all culture and economics doesn't have anything to say.

00:06:41.580 I think as long as Trump is able to say there's another one and a half million going back to work this month,

00:06:47.020 the markets are beginning to stabilize, albeit having a bit of a wobble recently.

00:06:52.860 He's going to be able to have that sort of let's not ruin it narrative.

00:06:56.060 And of course, then there's law and order. And there's this issue of safety and basic security, which I think ultimately will play to Trump's advantage.

00:07:07.000 And the other thing, perhaps it's deeper than all of that, is the sort of way in which liberalism has become detached from what it was supposed to be.

00:07:18.840 And it's morphed into this sort of hyper-liberalism that is quite disparaging of the national community.

00:07:29.740 And it seeks to repudiate many of the symbols and the myths and the identities that come with that national community, whether that's expressed in terms of questioning the underlying foundations of that country or tearing down important symbols for particular people in particular states or rewriting the narratives of history.

00:07:49.560 Most people still primarily identify with their country and most people derive their sense of self-esteem from that national identity.

00:07:59.740 So the more and more we see that being pulled apart and questioned and the more and more we're saying to citizens, you should feel bad for coming, for being born into this country and coming from this country, the more and more you will stoke a backlash against that.

00:08:12.480 And, of course, Trump benefited from that partly in 2016. But if anything, the volume of that, I think, has increased significantly since then.

00:08:20.320 Well, I'm an immigrant, so I'm better than you, mate.

00:08:23.340 You mentioned the polls quite a lot there, which I think is interesting to talk about

00:08:28.280 because I've been watching you on Twitter talking about the polls.

00:08:31.180 I mean, it's a big part of what you do, commenting on the different information that's coming

00:08:35.080 in on the data.

00:08:36.720 Tell us more about that in terms of how people perceive Trump in the sense that, you know,

00:08:43.440 the economy was, I mean, you can argue about it, but the economy certainly was doing well

00:08:47.880 by the conventional ways of measuring it.

00:08:49.900 Growth, unemployment, all of that stuff was doing well.

00:08:53.140 Then COVID hits.

00:08:55.000 Has COVID been factored in,

00:08:57.160 in the sense of people going,

00:08:58.480 yeah, I mean, look,

00:08:59.260 no one was going to maintain unemployment

00:09:01.520 at the record level, low levels that it was with COVID.

00:09:05.860 Or are people going, it's all Trump's fault,

00:09:07.880 you know, he's responsible,

00:09:10.040 the economy is going to be screwed

00:09:11.680 because of him, et cetera.

00:09:12.900 Like, how is that broken for him?

00:09:15.580 So Trump has lost ground in terms of how people perceive his handling of coronavirus.

00:09:22.280 He's become weaker on those indicators.

00:09:24.900 He's now level with Biden on the economy.

00:09:27.940 In a couple of polls, he's been trailing Biden.

00:09:30.660 But the point is that when you ask that question, who do you think would better manage the economy?

00:09:34.360 Only around 35, 36 percent of people are picking Trump or Biden.

00:09:38.880 So there's not an overwhelming enthusiasm for either candidate.

00:09:42.280 The other thing that's changed, which might be significant, is that the large majority of Americans now say America is heading in the wrong direction and that they think that they and their families are worse off than they were four years ago.

00:09:56.180 And so I think around the polls, what you're seeing is a general mood of disillusionment and despondency among Americans.

00:10:04.860 Now, of course, that can be interpreted in different ways.

00:10:07.600 That's not to say it's all anti-Trump.

00:10:09.360 I think there's just a sense of despair about what is happening to their country.

00:10:14.460 And I think they look around at the protests and the police officers being shot and the harassment and the polarization and just clearly they can see their country.

00:10:22.000 Well, and there's a pandemic, too.

00:10:23.320 In the right direction and the pandemic. Yeah, true.

00:10:27.040 So I think Trump's position in many ways has weakened, but I would still argue that the Democrats and Biden have yet to cut through in terms of the positive message.

00:10:38.140 Now, Obama did that. Obama cut through overwhelmingly. But to me, the Biden campaign has quite a few similarities with the Remain campaign in the UK and many similar campaigns in Europe in that it's overwhelmingly focused on the negative aspects of its opponents rather than setting out that positive vision of a sort of Biden America.

00:11:01.880 and that's where you can see on the polling questions around how do you feel about Biden

00:11:07.060 a lot of voters are still not enthusiastic about Biden including Democrats he's not inspiring the

00:11:15.920 same kind of grassroots mobilization that say Obama was able to do and on many of the enthusiasm

00:11:22.580 questions Trump still has quite an advantage you know in that I think unlike 2016 this election

00:11:31.440 is probably seen as being more existential, right?

00:11:36.300 If you're a Republican, you know,

00:11:38.260 this election is about saving your country

00:11:40.900 from the anarchic, chaotic, radical left.

00:11:44.020 If you are a Democrat,

00:11:45.580 this election is about saving the country

00:11:47.740 from Trumpism and the radical far right.

00:11:51.220 And so the stakes have gone up for both sides.

00:11:53.980 And that means that whoever wins,

00:11:55.860 the other side is going to feel

00:11:57.940 as though in some ways they're losing their country.

00:12:01.440 And that's why I think America is in such a dangerous position.

00:12:05.480 This is an issue that's been a concern for, I think, everybody.

00:12:08.580 And we'll get into what happens if this happens, what happens if that happens with Trump.

00:12:13.280 But the thing that you said there seems to me quite interesting.

00:12:18.920 On the one hand, you say Trump still has a good chance.

00:12:22.820 On the other hand, you say that he's par with Biden on the economy.

00:12:27.880 Now, I'm not the smartest person in the room.

00:12:32.060 Could you please repeat that?

00:12:33.460 It's because Matt is here.

00:12:34.860 I'm just saying for him, plus Anton.

00:12:37.140 But what I'm hearing there is the social stuff is where you are seeing people really feeling like Trump is maybe protecting them from something or not on side with people who are coming.

00:12:52.320 You said it's existential.

00:12:53.600 Is that going to be the driver here, do you think?

00:12:56.060 I think there are probably a lot of voters who might not be expressing their view, that might be expressing what we'd call a social desirability bias, that Trump is so toxic that perhaps they feel that they can't really confess to voting for him after the shit show of the last four years.

00:13:13.920 But also, I think at the same time, there's a lot that can change between now and early November.

00:13:19.320 The job numbers can change. The economy can begin to improve. The cases could start to go down.

00:13:24.660 Trump could point to weaknesses within Biden.

00:13:27.780 We have the debates to come.

00:13:29.220 We have a lot of things that could play a significant role.

00:13:33.640 And, you know, it's not a popular point.

00:13:35.300 Trump's a good campaigner.

00:13:37.060 Trump is good at the grassroots.

00:13:39.560 Now, whether the COVID virus and the lack of rallies and the difficulty with organizing that on the ground, you know, will that hurt Trump?

00:13:49.480 Possibly, you know, not forecasting and saying categorically.

00:13:53.960 Trump is going to win the election. But if anything, I think over the last few weeks,

00:13:58.300 we've seen things beginning to move in Trump's direction in some of the polling.

00:14:02.800 And I wouldn't at all be surprised if that carries on. Biden has been very quiet.

00:14:09.020 And he's not really shown himself to be the charismatic unifier that we expected.

00:14:16.260 Final question from me on just that line of questioning, Matt. If you were advising the

00:14:20.100 Biden campaign right now, what would you tell him to do?

00:14:22.740 The same thing I tell Keir Starmer to do, which is start to explain why you love the country.

00:14:28.200 What do you love about America? Stop telling people what you want to tear down and what you

00:14:32.600 want to change about the country. What do you love about the country? And why do you want to come from

00:14:37.260 that country? What do you identify with? And this is the same problem that runs through

00:14:41.920 centre-left politics today, in that it's become so detached from ordinary, average public opinion.

00:14:51.040 so at times self-absorbed and neglectful of how ordinary people think and feel

00:14:59.520 that it can no longer articulate why it is it wants to be in that country.

00:15:04.900 It's constantly talking about what's wrong with that country.

00:15:07.760 It's constantly repudiating institutions, traditions, myths, symbols.

00:15:13.280 And voters have picked up on that.

00:15:14.780 And as a researcher, there's not an easy way that we can survey that.

00:15:17.720 And I can say to you categorically, this is what makes a difference.

00:15:20.600 But if you look at the comprehensive defeat of Jeremy Corbyn less than a year ago, and if you look at Trump's win in 2016, and you look at the rise of populism, and you look at the collapse of social democracy across much of Europe, for me at least, and I'm happy for people to disagree with me, I think what runs through all of those moments is a clear sense among voters that they are sick of politicians telling them what is wrong with their country.

00:15:48.000 and they are proud to be from that country

00:15:50.640 and they like being from that country

00:15:52.040 and they derive their sense of esteem

00:15:53.520 and identity from that country.

00:15:54.760 And that's quite different

00:15:55.960 from overt ethnic nationalism.

00:15:58.860 And so I think the left

00:15:59.900 and in some ways moderate centrist liberals too

00:16:03.540 sometimes miss a trick on that.

00:16:05.580 And, you know, it's the old debate

00:16:06.800 that we've had on the show many a time.

00:16:08.520 But I would tell Biden,

00:16:10.340 go out there and tell people

00:16:11.520 what you love about America.

00:16:13.220 In the same way that I say to Keir Starmer,

00:16:14.760 go out there and say to people,

00:16:16.160 why do you love Putin?

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00:17:58.460 dot co.uk forward slash play and use the code Trigger. And we're not going to explain how to

00:18:05.260 spell the word Trigger because that would be patronising. It seems that we've talked a lot

00:18:12.500 about Biden, we haven't really addressed the elephant in the room, which is he doesn't appear

00:18:17.380 to be in the best possible shape. Sometimes when he's speaking, he's stumbling over words.

00:18:23.980 His campaign seems to be unclear. Do you think that will have an impact in that people see him

00:18:30.280 and think to themselves he's not physically well enough to be present because there is a narrative

00:18:34.500 being perpetuated about him? I think it would matter more if he was facing someone who was

00:18:39.780 clearly mentally balanced and competent and i think because he's facing trump in a way that's

00:18:46.860 sort of neutralized yeah um but we also know through things that we've experienced in this

00:18:51.420 country take jeremy corbyn as an example i think there was a there was an awareness among lots of

00:18:55.440 voters in 2017 that corbyn was not in the prime you know time of his life he was not the most

00:19:01.440 energetic and sort of passionate etc um and yet he still did he still did fairly well um so but

00:19:08.540 Well, nobody thought he had dementia, Matt.

00:19:10.260 Nobody thought he had dementia, sure.

00:19:11.500 But I'm not convinced that is as big a factor as it may be.

00:19:17.380 Now, of course, we might get to the debates and you guys might sort of sit here

00:19:21.620 and perhaps see one of your live shows during the debates and Biden might fall apart.

00:19:26.060 We don't know.

00:19:27.120 But I think he can probably hold it together.

00:19:29.560 In fact, if anything, our expectations of Biden now might be so low

00:19:34.760 that he may end up leaving us pleasantly surprised.

00:19:38.880 Really? And how big an influence do you think those debates are going to be?

00:19:42.740 Because at the moment, it seems as if, well, as you said, Trump is behind.

00:19:47.460 But Trump seems to thrive in that particular environment, doesn't he?

00:19:50.100 Yeah. I think political scientists might argue that debates

00:19:53.680 and the effects of debates are overblown in the media.

00:19:56.840 But there's something about this year where I think we can all sort of sense

00:19:59.920 that the stakes are high, and maybe this year, this is going to matter more than usual.

00:20:07.100 You know, we've seen so little of Biden during the campaign. We know that Trump, if he's up

00:20:12.940 against the wall, we know that he's going to come out swinging. That's, you know, what Trump does.

00:20:18.660 We know that's what he did with Clinton. We know he was aggressive and combative. And we know that

00:20:23.720 all of the optics that went into those debates, you know, the women that were associated with

00:20:28.940 Bill Clinton, etc. All of that stuff was designed to kind of undermine and psychologically unnerve

00:20:35.260 his opponents. So I think there'll be lots more tricks in the bag that are going to come out from

00:20:39.100 the Trump campaign as we go into those debates. And we can already, I think, guess what those are

00:20:43.160 going to be with regards to Biden. But again, it comes down to, will Biden himself be able to

00:20:50.280 not get sucked into that, keep distance and present to America what his unifying,

00:20:57.720 positive instrumental message really is.

00:21:01.220 And of course, the one thing I would say is,

00:21:02.600 unlike Obama, what did Obama do quite well?

00:21:05.880 He said, it's not the red states of America,

00:21:07.560 not the blue states, the United States of America.

00:21:09.280 I think we've come so far down

00:21:11.960 the kind of hyper-liberal road now.

00:21:15.080 We've come so far down the identity politics road now

00:21:18.960 that it's impossible for Biden to say that now,

00:21:22.320 that we are very quickly defining politics

00:21:27.320 by group identities and by racialized group identities and it's almost as if that brief

00:21:33.380 moment for the democrats that brief window of opportunity to unify people around something

00:21:38.540 that brings them together rather than things that separate them like their racial identity

00:21:41.840 we've kind of gone gone past that now so um i've been rereading a guy michael lind uh the american

00:21:49.380 writer who i recommend to everybody michael lind's book the next american nation in 1995 is one of

00:21:54.960 one of the most influential books, I think at least for me, is very insightful in US politics.

00:22:01.060 And Michael's argument in that is, in essence, you've gone through two stages in the post-war

00:22:05.720 period. In terms of civil rights, you've had the first stage where essentially civil rights

00:22:11.500 campaigners were focused on colorblind advancement, bringing different groups together

00:22:17.480 to make America a more equal, fair, tolerant country. And then really from the 70s onwards,

00:22:23.800 you have a second approach that kicks in that is principally about asymmetric multiculturalism,

00:22:30.560 affirmative action, race-based policy, and that is implicitly encouraging people to think about

00:22:37.920 themselves not as Americans per se, but as belonging to particular groups. And the moment

00:22:45.420 that you then start to move down that spiral, move down that road, so you can't really get people to

00:22:51.400 focus anymore on what's cutting across those group boundaries. So it becomes harder and harder

00:22:57.140 to mobilize that broad church, that big tent politics. And I think that's roughly where we

00:23:02.920 are now. And of course, I know you've had other people on the show that make this point too. But

00:23:07.540 if you look, for example, at some of the work in the US, we now know that that is really increasing

00:23:12.420 the likelihood that white Americans are now thinking of themselves as white Americans rather

00:23:18.280 than Americans, and that all of this is simply increasing the salience of people's race,

00:23:24.080 racial and ethnic identity. And this is a worrying place, I think, to be in an advanced society where

00:23:30.840 people are being encouraged to think of themselves in that way. And so Biden, I don't think,

00:23:36.660 will be able to get back to that cross-group message. There's a question that I wanted to ask,

00:23:41.000 because it's somebody, there's a figure on the Democrats side who had an appeal, and in my

00:23:47.680 opinion had a cut through maybe i'm wrong and could appeal to the donald trump supporter which

00:23:52.400 is bernie sanders do you think if we had that type of figure a bernie sanders s figure

00:23:57.620 he would be a more unifying influence as you were talking mate i had my money you were going to say

00:24:02.920 i would i would have quite liked to have seen bernie sanders versus trump in 2016 yeah i don't

00:24:10.680 think it would have been necessarily the recipe for healthy moderate balanced politics but just

00:24:16.220 as a just as an experiment yeah see who really would have won you know that contest uh i think

00:24:22.020 my view would be that trump would win that and i think the simple reason is that again for radical

00:24:30.180 uh socialists for center-left social democrats the problem they all face actually is they're being

00:24:35.560 out they're being attacked on two flanks whereas they are only speaking on one flank so you've got

00:24:41.340 economic security and cultural security and cultural security has become more important

00:24:45.940 in recent years for all of the reasons that we know, immigration, terrorism, transnational

00:24:51.600 organizations, rapid social and ethnic change. But centre-left politicians, radical-left socialists

00:25:00.940 are kind of stuck in this mindset that this is all about economic scarcity and economic

00:25:07.460 competition. And so all of this stuff is just racism. So we're not really going to engage with

00:25:12.320 and we're going to shut it down and we're just going to say this is really just about resources

00:25:16.400 and how we distribute resources. And as a consequence, they've been outflanked from

00:25:20.920 one country to another constantly because at the same time, many of the populace from Trump to

00:25:26.800 Farage to Le Pen also changed and that they were saying, well, we've always talked about the

00:25:33.380 cultural stuff, but now let's get a bit more protectionist on the economy too. Let's start

00:25:38.180 saying, well, hang on, why are all of these big multinationals dodging their taxes? Or for Trump,

00:25:43.020 let's turn up the volume on anti-China and reshoring and bringing back businesses to the US.

00:25:48.660 So, you know, both of those moves, I think, really left populists in a much more competitive

00:25:53.640 position, because then they're attacking the left on the economic dimension. But they're also

00:25:58.620 constantly berating the left on the cultural dimension, too. And that is where we still are,

00:26:06.220 in essence. And that is still the riddle that Keir Starmer and Biden and every other centre-left

00:26:12.740 social democrat needs to answer. And you can say, well, let's take the Danish road and maybe we'll

00:26:17.700 turn up the volume on immigration control and try and kind of meet these parties halfway. Or you

00:26:22.700 could go the complete opposite direction and say, no, that constituency is done. We're going to

00:26:28.280 remain firmly socially liberal and we're going to remain economically interventionist and we're

00:26:34.660 going to appeal to this new coalition of university graduates and minorities, which is probably where

00:26:39.520 many within the Labour Party, I think, still are. But one way or the other, if they don't solve that

00:26:45.020 riddle, they're not going to get back into power. You talk about solving the riddle for the centre

00:26:50.000 left parties. I mean, one of the things that I think, whether you're a Trump fan, and we have

00:26:55.080 some Trump fans who watch the show, or Biden's, not Biden fan, as we establish not many of those,

00:26:59.980 but certainly a Democratic supporter.

00:27:01.680 We have many of them watching the show as well.

00:27:05.680 The one thing they can all agree on

00:27:07.120 is that the two candidates

00:27:08.400 that the main parties have ended up with,

00:27:11.100 let's just say are suboptimal,

00:27:13.260 to put it very mildly, right?

00:27:15.220 How do the Democrats in particular,

00:27:16.960 because Trump won,

00:27:18.380 so you can see why people would be with him from then.

00:27:20.800 He is the president.

00:27:22.020 He's, as you say,

00:27:22.800 delivered on some of the things that he promised.

00:27:24.500 But how do the Democrats

00:27:26.200 who are targeting that progressive coalition

00:27:29.340 that you talk about end up with a very old very white man leading that uh why haven't they got

00:27:36.760 someone better i think there is a supply side problem um well i i think they had they experimented

00:27:45.120 with you know various candidates during the the primaries it didn't work out and i think

00:27:49.940 what they've gone back to is the safe territory it's the um it's obama revivalism right biden is

00:27:58.140 very different from Obama in many ways. He's more radical economically than Obama was.

00:28:02.220 But they've gone back to what they think they know, right? Which is, let's go back to the regime

00:28:08.660 that won before we had Trump. And this is what I mean about the retrospective liberalism, that

00:28:16.380 you see it all over the place. You see it in the kind of complaining of mainstream newspaper

00:28:22.160 columnists. Can't we just go back to the days of Blair in the third way? And you see it in the

00:28:26.860 positioning of political parties from Labour to the Democrats, there's still this reluctance to

00:28:33.640 accept that the rules of the game have changed and the foundations of politics have changed.

00:28:39.860 And the constituencies and the electorates that used to support those types of projects have

00:28:46.200 changed. They've moved and the dam has broken. And if you just take the UK as an example,

00:28:52.840 the reason the Red Wall collapsed, similar to the reason the Rust Belt states went to Trump,

00:28:58.960 is because we now have millions of voters who are cross-pressured, who are leaning left on the

00:29:03.960 economy, but leaning right on culture. And I've just finished a study for the Joseph Rantry

00:29:08.640 Foundation. And we talked about this when we last met after the election. We've just gone back and

00:29:13.400 run the numbers. And what you see in the UK, for example, is that all of the people that Labour

00:29:18.560 should have held on to in many of those Red Wall seats, the one thing they noticed was Labour

00:29:23.940 shifting to the pro-second referendum position. But they noticed that, they saw that, and that was

00:29:30.140 the cue for them to say, okay, this party's not interested in where I am on this cultural question

00:29:35.660 anymore, I'm off. And I think in the same way, Biden needs to be very careful because the cues

00:29:40.960 that he's sending to some of the voters, you know, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and so on,

00:29:45.400 They have to be positive ones. They have to be, okay, right, I'm going to bring back jobs. I'm

00:29:49.220 going to bring back manufacturing. I'm going to be tough on China. I mean, Biden is almost as

00:29:52.840 tough on China as Trump is, if you look at his policy platform. I'm going to, you know, focus

00:29:58.840 on not just your economic interests, but accept that actually the pace of change in America is

00:30:03.460 too great. And we need to perhaps, as we did in the early 20th century, slow down for a decade

00:30:08.820 or so and then think about you know getting back to that change in the future um but until until

00:30:15.680 they can do that you know they're not going to get back in the game how can he possibly do that

00:30:21.040 if he was to start sort of articulating that cultural position he would be strung up by his

00:30:27.540 balls by the far left of his so i think i think there are different ways of doing it right so

00:30:32.140 So take, what do we mean by this cultural dimension, right?

00:30:38.020 We mean voters that hold socially conservative values,

00:30:41.560 who prioritise order, stability, tradition, family.

00:30:48.160 They're anxious about crime.

00:30:51.300 They value conformity.

00:30:53.800 They don't like what they see as relentless churn and change.

00:30:57.920 Those social conservative voters.

00:30:59.280 And we see them in questions like,

00:31:01.000 do you think we should bring back capital punishment? Do you think that we should teach

00:31:04.780 children greater discipline? Do you think that social change is moving too quickly? All of those

00:31:10.840 kinds of things, right? There are different ways of tapping into that. So for example, what did

00:31:15.540 Blair do quite well? I mean, I appreciate Blair is a somewhat controversial figure on the left.

00:31:20.460 The one thing Blair did very well is he said, let's get tough on crime, but tough on the causes

00:31:25.920 of crime. And that was before we have the era of large-scale migration. So, of course, he could

00:31:31.200 get away with a bit more than perhaps he could today, where those issues have become more

00:31:35.760 important. But that was tapping into the cultural dimension in the same way that, say, a Labour

00:31:41.580 leader or a Democrat today saying, I think we should have a pause on large-scale migration

00:31:49.400 for five years so that we can help American workers

00:31:52.620 or British workers or whatever.

00:31:55.460 And that's what I mean by tapping into that dimension.

00:31:58.180 And you can do it in other ways.

00:31:59.160 You can do national pride in expressing belief in the country.

00:32:03.360 And even when Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell

00:32:05.700 were talking about their strategy around build it in Britain,

00:32:09.800 some of those campaign messages, I think,

00:32:12.220 might have actually tapped into some of the concerns

00:32:14.840 in Red Wall seats because voters might have interpreted that

00:32:17.600 as being, actually, they're quite interested in sort of respecting the country.

00:32:22.580 And that still, I think, is why Corbyn did reasonably well in 2017, because he came up

00:32:27.600 with that position that said, on the one hand, I respect where you are on Brexit and we're

00:32:31.480 going to do it.

00:32:32.460 But on the other hand, I accept that you feel the system is rigged.

00:32:35.900 And it's in a way, Corbyn should have held on to that position and not been pushed off

00:32:39.300 on it.

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00:33:41.560 patronizing at all absolutely oh and by the way all those little words you use i've got no idea

00:33:45.800 what they mean absolutely now we've touched it already in this interview but it's something that

00:33:52.760 i really wanted to explore with you and i think a lot of people are very worried about this

00:33:56.240 i don't think any one of those two parties are going to accept the fact that they lost in good

00:34:04.100 grace and doesn't that leave democracy in a very dangerous position so i would say the one thing i

00:34:10.900 think we all want to see is a clear outcome yeah the nightmare is the sort of 2000 rerun where you

00:34:19.220 have an election that just is not resolved for you know 30 odd days and everybody's standing in

00:34:24.460 limbo while we count the postal votes and some of the states are contested or somebody wins the

00:34:29.220 popular vote by a mile but another candidate wins the electoral college just for the sake of

00:34:35.100 electoral integrity and as you know a friend of america and you know i think we here i think would

00:34:41.300 want to see a kind of clear outcome but there is an interesting question i think much of the debate

00:34:45.040 now is focused on what is going to happen if trump loses i think the equally interesting question is

00:34:50.700 what is going to happen if Biden loses? Because both sides are so invested in this election outcome.

00:34:57.560 You know, and the idea that just one side is delegitimizing this election is nonsense. I mean,

00:35:01.400 it's going on on both sides. Both sides, campaigners, commentators, politicians are

00:35:06.540 in a race to the bottom already to try and delegitimize this election. So we might as well

00:35:11.060 just call it what it is. But for Democrats who I think have been, you know, obviously have become

00:35:16.580 more convinced in their belief around the scale of discrimination in American society,

00:35:22.920 the threat of Trumpism, the belief that the foundations and the institutions of American

00:35:30.440 democracy are now at risk.

00:35:34.520 You know, what is going to happen to that sentiment if Trump wins again?

00:35:38.060 Because I think it would be such a devastating blow because it will remind everybody, firstly,

00:35:45.120 that they don't have the answers.

00:35:48.880 Secondly, that liberalism

00:35:51.600 doesn't have the answer to populism.

00:35:55.280 They need to go back to the drawing board

00:35:57.280 and start all over again.

00:35:58.500 Everything that's happened over the last four years

00:36:00.400 has not made a difference.

00:36:02.940 And in my mind, I go back to, you know,

00:36:06.000 the five stages of grief, the five stages of loss

00:36:08.720 that came out in 1969,

00:36:11.120 where Elizabeth Kubler-Ross talked about

00:36:15.860 you start with denial,

00:36:18.400 which I think we've gone through over the last four years.

00:36:21.980 You go to anger, which I think we've seen,

00:36:25.780 which is a sort of dismissal and the derision

00:36:28.580 that's thrown at anybody who holds a view

00:36:30.860 that is not consistent with the liberal consensus.

00:36:34.300 And then you get to bargaining

00:36:35.540 and you have to bargain with the other side

00:36:38.140 and you have to try and reach this new settlement.

00:36:42.440 You have to try and give them something to try and bargain it out

00:36:45.220 before you can think about getting close to the end state of acceptance.

00:36:50.260 And I don't think we've come out of denial or anger yet.

00:36:54.200 I think we're still in that phase.

00:36:56.540 If you look at the books that are coming out,

00:36:58.220 the end of democracy, the collapse of American society,

00:37:03.440 the sort of continual turning in of commentary has become much more insular in America over the last four years.

00:37:10.880 In an already insular country, it's become obsessed with deconstructing the foundations of the country.

00:37:18.980 And I think all of that points to this denial and anger and inability to articulate a response.

00:37:25.880 And if Trump wins again, it's difficult to see how all of that doesn't, you know, doesn't just go into steroids.

00:37:34.480 You know, you just have this, you know, outpouring of disbelief and frustration and anger and despair.

00:37:43.480 I think it's safe to say that Trump probably wouldn't manage that with dignity and competency.

00:37:50.540 He made this point when we had him on the show, didn't he?

00:37:52.400 Yeah, he did indeed.

00:37:53.140 there's one final question that i want to ask you on that do you think what we're starting to see

00:37:57.700 is the breakup of the union just this incredible polarization between red and blue you have states

00:38:03.160 which are blue which will always be blue states are always be red and the fact that we just can't

00:38:08.540 seem to talk to each other anymore i don't i don't know it's a short answer i think the problem that

00:38:14.900 America has post-Cold War, maybe China will fill the void, is that it doesn't have the

00:38:23.140 existential external threat that combined Americans together. So what we've seen since

00:38:31.800 the end of the Cold War are, I think at least, Americans turning in on themselves because they

00:38:37.600 don't have the grand narratives that perhaps they once had to try and provide that unity and

00:38:43.080 coherence. So as a consequence, I think they've become much more insular, much more engaged

00:38:50.740 in themselves, rather than perhaps trying to promote unity against Russia or whoever else.

00:39:01.060 And that's a real problem for them. I'm not going to say who it is, but I had a similar

00:39:05.780 conversation with a very prominent US academic not long ago and asked him the same question,

00:39:10.820 Do you think living in America, observing everything you're observing, do you think that America will hold itself together?

00:39:16.940 And he said, I'm not sure. I'm not sure where we'll be 30, 40 years from now.

00:39:22.180 And of course, there have been prophecies that the United States will fall apart.

00:39:27.040 Samuel Huntington, for example, was one who not so long ago argued that in an era of rapid change,

00:39:32.660 that southern states would essentially leave the Union,

00:39:39.260 not because they would voluntarily opt out,

00:39:41.780 but because essentially they would be taken over.

00:39:44.460 And so far, we've discovered that Huntington was not correct in that prediction.

00:39:50.360 But one of his main concerns at the same time

00:39:52.920 was that America would fall into the hands of what he called a denationalized elite

00:39:57.900 that didn't identify with the country

00:40:00.460 and that was more interested in deconstructing American history.

00:40:05.840 And he worried as well that that would have pretty disastrous effects

00:40:09.760 on the cohesion of American society.

00:40:11.920 I think what's interesting too is if you look at writers on the left and the right,

00:40:16.680 think about some of the most influential books over the last, let's say, 20 years,

00:40:20.760 Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, Charles Murray, Coming Apart, Huntington's Who Are We.

00:40:28.160 those books

00:40:30.880 John Coddling of the American Mind

00:40:33.980 all of those books in a way have been sort of saying the same thing

00:40:37.160 which is that internally the social fabric

00:40:39.880 is being stretched over time

00:40:42.240 Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair is another

00:40:45.100 and that if you are

00:40:47.740 white, middle aged, working class

00:40:50.680 life generally is getting worse for you

00:40:52.860 and if you're from the coast

00:40:55.320 university educated, middle class elite

00:40:58.000 you're gradually drifting away not just economically but socially and culturally so we know these

00:41:03.060 things are happening and nobody is yet has got a got an answer to that um i think what we're seeing

00:41:09.200 in the uk we're on the same road but we're a few miles behind we can see many of the same things

00:41:13.880 actually happening in the uk not as pronounced we don't we don't have the opioid crisis we don't

00:41:18.860 have the health care system but we do have growing levels of disconnect between these different

00:41:24.020 groups socially and culturally um so we should watch america watch what happens in america

00:41:29.740 extremely closely well we wish them well because it doesn't sound like a healthy recipe which is

00:41:34.280 one of the reasons we spent so much time talking about it on the show for so long because uh what

00:41:40.080 happens in america doesn't stay in america as we know and it is troubling and and you know francis

00:41:45.620 previous and very good question about the the repercussions of the different outcomes when we

00:41:50.360 had James Lindsay on the show. This is one of the things that he talked about. I think it was the

00:41:54.560 time we had him on with Peter Boghossian, that a re-election of Donald Trump will not wake anybody

00:42:00.860 who opposes him up to the fact that they may be heading down the wrong path. It will be seen as

00:42:06.840 vindication of their position, which is, yes, America is a white nationalist country. Here's

00:42:12.220 more evidence of that. We need to push harder. We need to fight more against these evil people

00:42:16.880 on the far right. So you addressed what happens if Trump wins. What happens if Trump loses?

00:42:26.340 Yeah, I mean, I think there's a legitimate reason to feel concerned about

00:42:33.840 the conclusion those voters will reach if they feel as though, you know, their voice is now

00:42:43.060 out of the political system. And I think what worries me about America is that existential

00:42:50.060 sense of loss, that the election is no longer framed about transactional policy. I mean,

00:42:56.680 if you go back and you, even if you look at the Trump ads that have gone out over the last two

00:43:00.000 weeks, the Trump ads are not about, you know, let's increase taxes or let's change policy XYZ.

00:43:06.760 They're about save your country. And I think in a way, what we're getting back to, Michael

00:43:11.760 Oakeshott talked about this a little bit, the political theorists, that on the one hand,

00:43:17.480 you have the politics of pragmatism, which is about technocracy, which is about

00:43:23.820 the dry managerialism of running a state and keeping a country ticking over.

00:43:31.560 And on the other hand, you have the politics of salvation and national renewal and redemption.

00:43:37.680 and in all democracies politics is a sort of balance between those two so if you think for

00:43:43.180 example about remain and leave in britain remain was overly technocratic dry managerial and it lost

00:43:49.940 voters and leave was redemptive it was about saving your country taking back control and they

00:43:56.220 existed in this awkward balance and then you know when the populists go a little bit too far

00:44:00.980 the technocrats come back in the room and say well hang on a second you want to rip up an

00:44:04.600 international treaty. Well, let's have a conversation about that. And I think in the same way with

00:44:09.120 America, what you can see clearly in this election is this sort of sense of, on both sides, their

00:44:16.000 candidates being ultimately about national salvation. So it's not about transactional

00:44:20.840 policy anymore. It's a sense that if Biden doesn't win, I've lost my country to these right-wing

00:44:26.360 reactionaries. Whereas if Trump doesn't win, particularly for the more militant white

00:44:31.960 nationalists, the militia groups, and those kinds of people who clearly feel that something is

00:44:38.880 fundamentally wrong with their country for whatever reason, of course I think they're

00:44:44.280 going to conclude that their country has been taken away from them, etc. And I think that's

00:44:48.380 where we're in a very dangerous place, this idea of cumulative extremism, which you can see in some

00:44:55.400 of the coverage around Portland, that one side is fending off against another, the moderate centre

00:45:00.980 has given way, and you've got this sort of low-level tit-for-tat violence that just sort

00:45:06.820 of becomes normalized over time. You know, the number of occasions over the last couple of

00:45:12.480 months I've gone on to say, you know, somebody's been shot in America, somebody's been killed,

00:45:15.480 and sort of just sort of feel like, oh, this is kind of just normal, you know, but this sort of

00:45:19.700 legitimation of tit-for-tat violence and how it just gradually seems to increase. I think that's

00:45:25.220 where I get concerned about America, because I used to live in America, I used to live in Michigan,

00:45:29.480 and it didn't feel like that when I was there.

00:45:32.840 It felt a little bit more cohesive.

00:45:35.600 And there has been lots of people, mainly on the left,

00:45:38.620 mainly on my Facebook feed, who have been saying things

00:45:41.020 that there is a danger that Trump won't cede the presidency.

00:45:46.360 That's nonsense.

00:45:47.700 I mean, who knows what Trump will do?

00:45:49.440 I don't know.

00:45:52.100 Thanks, Matt.

00:45:52.980 No, I don't know.

00:45:54.420 But I think I'd be amazed if he did that.

00:45:57.400 I think probably we know what he'll do.

00:45:59.700 He'll look at it like a money-making opportunity

00:46:01.560 to rebuild brand Trump and go and do whatever

00:46:04.360 he wants to do in the business world

00:46:06.560 and critique his successor from the sidelines.

00:46:09.220 I think the interesting question about Trump losing

00:46:11.760 is what happens to the Republicans,

00:46:13.100 because the Republicans then have essentially two choices,

00:46:16.020 which is double down on Trumpism,

00:46:18.380 which I don't think they'll do.

00:46:19.460 I think they'll conclude, like they did after Bush,

00:46:21.660 that they need a revamp.

00:46:23.360 They need to move back to the center.

00:46:27.400 And then you've got this interesting choice between sort of doing that through a kind of, you know, neoliberal sort of centre-right, you know, let's go back to the liberal consensus, business-friendly, you know, let's stop talking about migration, let's just be, you know, good old-fashioned conservatives, versus the sort of Rubio stuff that we can see coming through.

00:46:48.140 Let's actually be a bit more like Tucker Carlson. Let's be a bit more interventionist on the economy.

00:46:54.380 And let's also keep the culture pedal down. And I think those are the strategic choices that the Republicans will face.

00:47:02.500 And something that has clearly come through over the last few years is just how influential some of those voices really are.

00:47:07.740 So if you look at what Trump did with the executive order on critical race theory,

00:47:12.420 I mean, if you go back and you watch Tucker Carlson, I think the week before had the show and the guests saying this, you know, this is what Trump should do with his executive order. He should remove all training involving critical race theory from federal agencies and institutions. And the next week, Trump did it word for word.

00:47:31.940 And so clearly, this sort of orbit of Tucker Carlson and those people is clearly more influential than they used to be.

00:47:42.200 So the Republicans will have this sort of strategic dilemma facing them after a Trump loss.

00:47:49.040 Well, as someone who's been on Tucker Carlson, and I have some very good ideas about what Donald Trump should do about YouTube.

00:47:55.980 Donald, if you're watching, or Tucker, rather, if you're watching, get me on.

00:47:58.880 I've got some great ideas that Donald needs to hear.

00:48:01.940 But we joke about it. And you talk about the situation in America in a sort of clinical detached way, as is your job, you know, a professor of politics. But for me, as someone who's observing it, I find it very worrying. I find it incredibly worrying.

00:48:17.060 This fraying of what you're really describing, if I can paraphrase it, is a country that had a uniting myth or uniting idea.

00:48:27.140 Noah Harari would call it a uniting myth of some kind, is now retreating into racial groups and no longer speaking to its common purpose, its common sense of who these people are.

00:48:42.900 I mean, that's an incredibly dangerous recipe, isn't it?

00:48:45.000 Yeah, but I try not to be apocalyptic, because I think, you know, if you go through history, you know, there's always been apocalypticism, and there's always been a sense of sort of doom and gloom and despair. And America is also the country that has been routinely written off over the years, but has managed to hold itself together and keep going.

00:49:03.220 and the American dream we tend to forget this but it is highly individualistic I mean it is

00:49:08.020 ultimately about making yourself successful and rich and prosperous and that that is slightly

00:49:13.700 different from the cultures that we are more used to I think in parts of Europe so I'm I'm probably

00:49:20.120 less won over by the idea that America is suddenly going to fall apart I think you know what is

00:49:25.740 significant perhaps over the longer term is that in some sense the the communal bonds that are there

00:49:31.980 in some senses are being undermined on different levels and I think that's what's becoming

00:49:37.180 problematic. You've got the educational divide where we can see people pulling away from one

00:49:41.900 another. You've got this sort of distant insular political elite that is moving away from voters

00:49:50.800 both in terms of their backgrounds being very affluent, often being multi-millionaires but

00:49:57.060 also their social liberalism in many senses, their cultural liberalism. And then I think we've got

00:50:02.940 this lack of external challenge and threat that is not allowing, I think, Americans to define

00:50:09.940 themselves against that in a way that they would, for example, against, you know, against Russia and

00:50:15.920 against communism. And if anything, they're looking internally at the threats rather than

00:50:21.100 externally um but we have to get away from this politics of deconstruction because that that is

00:50:27.220 dangerous i think the more and more people believe that you are deconstructing their imagined

00:50:33.740 community and those unifying myths that you pointed to and what do they have to to cling on

00:50:39.880 to because there isn't really much else for lots of people i think that's where we need to try and

00:50:45.400 accept the good and the bad and watching nigel bigger on your show i think made this point very

00:50:49.640 eloquently that history is complex and there are good bits and there are bad bits and we need to

00:50:56.160 accept both of those but the puritanical approach to national history that we can see even today

00:51:03.780 with the renaming of the building in Edinburgh but also that we've seen in the United States with

00:51:10.880 the various projects that have been pushed by various media I think it's incredibly

00:51:16.540 unsettling for most voters

00:51:18.980 who view their way of life

00:51:21.600 and their traditions and identities

00:51:23.000 as being not only eroded

00:51:25.340 but as not being valued and respected

00:51:27.560 by those who are in power.

00:51:30.360 That's just not a good place

00:51:31.700 to be for anybody.

00:51:33.240 And you wrote your book

00:51:35.160 which is brilliant and it's obviously all about populism.

00:51:37.960 Do you think we're reaching the end of populism

00:51:39.800 or do you still think it's got a way to go?

00:51:42.060 Well our argument certainly is that

00:51:43.360 populism is entwined in democracies.

00:51:45.600 You can never really get rid of it.

00:51:46.960 It's sort of always there.

00:51:48.800 And in a way, you wouldn't want to get rid of it

00:51:50.480 because populism is, in some ways, there's a silver lining.

00:51:54.600 It's always reminding us that there are groups

00:51:56.140 that are not represented in the system.

00:51:57.660 And, you know, it's not the same as fascism.

00:52:01.160 It's very different.

00:52:02.000 It's quite organic.

00:52:03.780 And it comes from...

00:52:04.300 Not according to the Guardian, man.

00:52:05.780 It comes from within.

00:52:07.640 I love the way he always responds to our banter.

00:52:10.340 He just ignores it and moves on.

00:52:11.560 No, but it comes from within the tensions of democracy.

00:52:14.640 So we're not going to get rid of it.

00:52:15.860 And so populism has had a bad crisis.

00:52:18.300 If you look at all the polling across Europe and North America,

00:52:20.880 Salvini, AFD in Germany, Bolsonaro in Brazil,

00:52:24.500 they've had a bad coronavirus crisis.

00:52:28.020 Their poll ratings have gone down.

00:52:29.880 But we can also see during this crisis

00:52:32.280 that many of the social and economic divides

00:52:34.620 that have been underpinning our society for the last 30 years

00:52:38.720 are being exacerbated.

00:52:40.200 Most of the people who lost their job early on

00:52:41.940 were low-income, low-educated workers.

00:52:43.940 Most of the people who have suffered their health effects of coronavirus are those same groups.

00:52:48.420 Meanwhile, we know the middle class university graduates, winners, have been at home, on Zoom, drinking quarantinis, and generally things have been, you know, okay.

00:52:58.000 And what was interesting at the beginning of the crisis, at least for me, is that our isolation at the beginning was compulsory.

00:53:04.000 But over time, it's become voluntary.

00:53:06.100 And some groups have been able to do it because it's been an economic luxury.

00:53:09.940 And other groups haven't been able to do it.

00:53:12.020 And so we've seen, again, this divergence between different groups. You've also seen it at the state level. If you look at the eurozone, the economic divergence between north and south has been exacerbated during this crisis. And the recovery story in Europe will be one of different speed recoveries that will exacerbate the story of divergence between north and south.

00:53:31.820 It's not to say the Eurozone is going to disintegrate, but it is to say that as we come out of this, the divides that really dominated the 2010s and led to what was one of the most volatile decades in a long time, those divides are going to still be with us and probably be a little bit bigger than they were in earlier years.

00:53:50.960 So what was the message of the 2010 Great Recession?

00:53:56.340 I mean, if we had this conversation as Lehman Brothers was collapsing and we said, let's predict what's going to happen as a consequence of this over the next 10 years, would we have predicted Trump, Brexit, Bolsonaro, Salvini, AFD, you know, Le Pen in the final round, et cetera, et cetera?

00:54:13.720 We wouldn't have predicted it.

00:54:14.780 And I think the political effects of crises come downstream.

00:54:18.340 We know this crisis is going to have political effects.

00:54:21.440 We know this is going to lead to increased volatility.

00:54:25.520 We know that voters are going to be disillusioned and pissed off.

00:54:29.320 We just don't know how that is going to find its expression.

00:54:32.960 Will it bring back the centre-left?

00:54:34.800 Because now voters are going to want to talk about economic redistribution,

00:54:38.300 unemployment, inequality, tax.

00:54:40.820 Or will it bring back the populace?

00:54:42.540 Because voters are going to say, I've had enough of this.

00:54:45.400 This is just an unsustainable settlement.

00:54:48.460 We don't know.

00:54:49.020 All I think we can say for certain, and you can replay this in 2029 and we can all laugh at how wrong I was, but I think the 2020s are going to be just as volatile, if not more volatile, than the 2010s.

00:55:01.920 Well, that's a nice positive note.

00:55:03.120 Oh, great. Thanks, mate.

00:55:06.820 At least he didn't promise to eat his hat.

00:55:08.780 Yeah, yeah.

00:55:09.520 That could have been difficult.

00:55:13.520 It's an interesting time, isn't it, Matt?

00:55:15.480 It's a very interesting time.

00:55:17.380 If you had a gun to your head, who's going to win in November?

00:55:24.260 As of today, I think Biden will win.

00:55:26.940 Really?

00:55:27.300 Really.

00:55:27.900 That's interesting. Why?

00:55:29.360 But as I said earlier, I think a lot can change.

00:55:31.140 Yeah, of course it can.

00:55:31.880 So just for clarity, we're recording this sort of early mid-September

00:55:35.420 for people who are watching later.

00:55:38.140 Why at this point would you say that Biden will win?

00:55:40.460 I think that the sheer hatred of Trump among various groups is going to boost turnout and conceal many of the weaknesses that still face the Democrats, the lack of a positive unifying message, all of the things that we've talked about, Biden's personality issues and so on.

00:56:05.260 I think for millions of Americans, Trump is so ghastly and it's such, in their eyes, an aberration that I think we will see turnout around the block.

00:56:17.620 And I think that will be millennials, Zoomers, African-Americans.

00:56:22.580 It will be liberal graduates.

00:56:25.260 And I think we'll be surprised at the backlash to Trump.

00:56:30.220 That's really interesting because I think it's going to be that way.

00:56:33.160 i still think a lot can change i just think where we are now yeah i think and we see we see it

00:56:39.000 every day on social media i think for americans i think the trump project has just been so

00:56:44.240 uh existential you know that when we get closer to november they will all individually be mulling

00:56:51.640 over you know that question of what can i do to get america into a different place uh and you know

00:56:59.440 turnout may be high on both sides.

00:57:03.620 But I think as of now, and also given where Biden is

00:57:07.360 just in terms of statistics and polling, I mean, he's got a stronger

00:57:11.340 lead than Clinton had. He's got a more sustainable

00:57:15.120 lead. In some of the swing states, you know, in

00:57:19.160 some ways he's got an easier path to win the Electoral College

00:57:23.260 than Clinton did. And he's got big guns

00:57:27.500 he can bring out.

00:57:29.900 He's got some big guns

00:57:30.920 in terms of people

00:57:32.680 who can help him

00:57:34.840 along the campaign.

00:57:36.860 Like Obama, you mean?

00:57:37.940 Like Obama, yeah.

00:57:39.400 Anyone else?

00:57:42.540 One big gun.

00:57:44.520 There's two Obamas.

00:57:46.360 Good point.

00:57:47.920 I think they're still incredibly powerful.

00:57:49.860 It's the question which one of them is bigger, by the way.

00:57:51.360 I think they're incredibly powerful.

00:57:53.660 I think Obama's still

00:57:54.660 for a generation of Americans, I think, you know,

00:58:00.260 as we get into the final strait,

00:58:02.760 they are going to be bombarded by those big guns.

00:58:08.360 And do you think as well the reason Obama's so powerful

00:58:11.060 is that when he walks on stage, he's a statesman-like figure?

00:58:14.980 Even if you disagree with his politics,

00:58:16.780 the way he holds a stage, the way he conducts himself,

00:58:19.340 the way he speaks, he comes across like a president.

00:58:22.700 And when you combine it with someone like Trump

00:58:24.480 and the way he's so divisive on Twitter and inflammatory,

00:58:28.320 that that is really going to be the thing that pushes Biden over the line.

00:58:31.920 I think Obama appeals to the better angels of people's nature.

00:58:36.560 I think he is more focused on the unifying aspects of American culture and identity.

00:58:41.140 And I'm not saying I'm necessarily a pro or anti.

00:58:45.440 I just think as a strategist and a politician,

00:58:47.980 he's better at getting people to turn out than Biden is.

00:58:52.540 And I think probably he's a lot better at doing that than Trump is.

00:58:57.460 And if you go back and you watch the 2016 campaign, Obama really did keep his distance from Hillary.

00:59:04.160 He wasn't as prominent as perhaps we might have expected him to be.

00:59:08.300 And this time, I think he's taken it very personally.

00:59:10.960 And you can see that in how the campaign has been evolving around Biden.

00:59:16.540 And I think for a lot of people, even today, I read that Bloomberg is giving Biden 100 million for Florida. I think a lot of the old guard elite have taken Trump very, very personally.

00:59:30.760 Now, I completely accept there's an argument, as we saw in Britain, that if you line up the elite, voters will rebel even more.

00:59:39.020 But I think even among ordinary Americans, I think there's something about the Trump project that will increase their turnout in a way that may be problematic for Trump.

00:59:53.320 But let's agree to disagree.

00:59:55.440 Well, we'll see.

00:59:56.220 What the hell do I know?

00:59:57.420 You're much more of an expert in this.

00:59:58.900 You should come on more often.

01:00:00.100 And he's actually positively humbled today.

01:00:02.320 No, I know.

01:00:02.840 I'm in the presence of greatness, which for me, working with you is a rarity, can I just say.

01:00:07.960 What do you think is going to happen, Francis?

01:00:09.080 He thinks the same thing as me.

01:00:10.740 Listen, I predicted Trump.

01:00:12.080 I predicted Brexit.

01:00:12.880 The only thing I didn't predict was Leicester City.

01:00:14.680 I went for Spurs in the Premier League.

01:00:16.160 So who's going to win in November?

01:00:17.560 Trump.

01:00:18.900 Two Trumps and a Biden.

01:00:21.180 I'll tell you what, though.

01:00:22.340 If you do think, whoever you think, there's a lot of value in the betting markets right now.

01:00:27.900 Yeah, absolutely.

01:00:29.220 For sure.

01:00:29.460 we do not endorse gambling or whatever

01:00:32.760 Gary the lawyer told us not to say

01:00:34.360 we've got to let Matt go so we've just got time

01:00:36.760 for our final question. I wanted to ask him if he thought

01:00:38.520 Trump's been a good president but anyway we won't do that

01:00:40.760 yeah that wouldn't divide or say

01:00:42.580 anybody or put him in a difficult position

01:00:44.540 in any way. Go for the last question

01:00:46.300 so what's

01:00:47.500 the one thing we always end with which is what is the one thing

01:00:50.680 we're not talking about as a society

01:00:52.800 that we really should be

01:00:53.920 great question

01:00:56.420 I think we have gone through

01:00:58.340 two stages post 2016 right big 2016 regards i think the first stage was get this stuff out of

01:01:04.960 here um you know democracy is over these guys are fascists i think where we are now the second stage

01:01:12.060 much more interesting we're beginning finally to talk about the very understandable reasons why

01:01:19.620 people felt uh they've lost out from the settlement and that's reflected in a an array of

01:01:25.700 new books that have come out that have been questioning things like where our meritocracy

01:01:30.320 has gone wrong, that have been questioning whether we got it right with the liberal

01:01:34.140 consensus, that have been questioning how liberalism has come unstuck and become quite

01:01:39.420 destructive and quite narcissistic.

01:01:43.160 I've been going back and reading a lot of interesting books in the 90s, Christopher

01:01:47.620 Lash and others, looking at what they tell us about today.

01:01:52.400 And I think we want to stay there, it would be my answer, Francis.

01:01:56.800 We want to stay, we want to keep the conversation focused on what led us to come unstuck in the first place.

01:02:03.460 Because one of my fears is Biden wins in November.

01:02:09.140 Bolsonaro loses in Brazil.

01:02:13.600 Keir Starmer and the SNP win via coalition in 2024-25.

01:02:19.640 and we sort of say liberalism's back social democracy's back we don't have anything to

01:02:26.220 worry about let's carry on because I think that would be incredibly misleading I think where we

01:02:31.340 are now where we're getting to is a much more interesting national conversation finally about

01:02:36.740 what brought us here in the first place and how can we make people's lives better and whether

01:02:42.320 that's through the leveling up agenda in the UK or whether it's about coming up with interesting

01:02:47.160 counter policies to Trump

01:02:49.280 to help some of the Rust Belt states or whatever it is

01:02:51.440 that's the more interesting place to be

01:02:53.340 rather than this kind of polarised

01:02:55.420 shouting match

01:02:57.300 between both sides. So let's try and

01:02:59.020 stay there I suppose would be my

01:03:00.820 plea. Does that answer your question? It does indeed

01:03:03.400 and thank you so much for coming on Matt

01:03:05.420 if people want to find you on Twitter, social

01:03:07.320 media, where's the best place for it?

01:03:09.660 My Twitter feed.

01:03:11.380 Which is? At GoodwinMJ

01:03:13.620 At GoodwinMJ. Perfect and make

01:03:15.400 sure you get national populism a revolt against liberal democracy it's a great book we've talked

01:03:20.080 with matt several times as you'll know uh thank you for watching and we will see you very soon

01:03:24.920 with another brilliant episode or live stream and they all go out 7 p.m uk time tuesday right

01:03:30.200 the way through to sunday see you soon guys

01:03:45.400 We'll be right back.

01:04:15.400 Murbush.com.

TRIGGERnometry - September 20, 2020

Will Trump Win Again？ - Matthew Goodwin

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