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00:00First of all, what was your gut instinct when your alarm clock rang this morning, or did
00:07you not need one?
00:09Well, my gut instinct was that the past week has been a pretty good week for Kamala Harris
00:17and a pretty bad week for Donald Trump.
00:20So my gut instinct was that Harris was in a stronger position than she was a week ago.
00:25Whether that will be strong enough, I can't tell you.
00:28But gut instincts change throughout the day, I've noticed.
00:32Yeah, mine hasn't changed today, but that's probably because I've just been looking at
00:36the same numbers I was looking at last night.
00:40What's going on with democracy in America?
00:43Well, I can describe it very simply.
00:47Through a period of historical evolution now that's gone on for a full generation, the
00:52United States is both closely divided and deeply divided.
00:58And it turns out that that is a very bad combination for trying to govern effectively
01:03in a system of checks and balances, not a parliamentary system where if you win, you
01:08win everything.
01:09What is that about?
01:10Is that just sheer luck that you have people on the divide, if you will, on both sides
01:16that are roughly even?
01:18Is it an institutional problem with this constitution that's sometimes difficult to explain, drawn
01:24up in the 18th century?
01:26What's it about?
01:27Well, in part, it's about deep cleavages on issues ranging from economics to culture that
01:37have developed and widened over the period of generation.
01:42It's also the case that both parties have gotten increasingly good at slicing and dicing
01:48the electorate, so...
01:50They call it micro-targeting?
01:51Exactly.
01:52To get as close to a majority as possible.
01:57And so the technology of politics has helped contribute to the narrowing of the gap between
02:03the two parties.
02:05But in part, it's because of our system that has divided the country into states whose
02:12total electoral votes are pretty evenly balanced.
02:16I can remember, in a close election that I remember, the first one that I remember
02:21of 1960, 35 states were swing states.
02:27Most of the country was within a very narrow margin.
02:30Now we have some states that are very Republican, some states that are very Democratic, and
02:35just a handful that are truly contested.
02:38And that's one of the things that's made the elections so close.
02:41And those political parties are changing.
02:44You mentioned the 1960s.
02:45It was a time when the Democratic Party had a stronghold in the South.
02:52And there was a sort of a generational change, perhaps even a change of more than a century,
02:59where the allegiances flipped a half century later.
03:05I ask, could allegiances flip again?
03:08Are we seeing some kind of redrawing of the political map, or did it already happen in
03:132016?
03:14Well, it started to happen—it didn't start to happen in 2016.
03:20It was accelerated in 2016, but it hasn't stopped.
03:24And previously, you could talk about this in regional terms.
03:28Now you need to talk about it in class terms.
03:31Increasingly, highly educated people are gravitating towards the Democratic Party.
03:36People without college educations are heading quickly towards the Republican Party.
03:41And as we've learned from politics, not just in the United States, but all over the Democratic
03:45West, a college education comes with a particular set of outlooks, willingness to deal with
03:53diversity, willingness to deal with change, a preference for urban life.
04:00And increasingly, people without college educations are less comfortable with diversity, less
04:06comfortable with change, and less comfortable with urban life.
04:10You see an urban-rural split, you see an education split, and you see an occupational split.
04:15The United States is not distinctive in this respect.
04:18Not distinctive in this respect.
04:19One of the questions you asked—and it'll be my last one to you—you're wondering,
04:23Donald Trump, people thought, oh, he's finished after 2020.
04:27Now you're wondering, can he create a multi-ethnic working class party?
04:32This is the great question.
04:34Because the Republicans shifted from being a party of educated white people to a party
04:43of less educated white people.
04:46But white working class voters are not a majority in the country, and they keep on shrinking
04:51as a share of the population.
04:52What Donald Trump is trying to do is to create within the Republican Party a working class
04:58coalition across ethnic and racial lines.
05:02If he succeeds in doing that—and this election will be a test of that, though maybe not the
05:06last test—then he will have completely reconfigured American politics.
05:12And this will be the new axis of division for the next generation.
05:16And like you say, perhaps something that will influence as well the politics of Europe and
05:20beyond.
05:21William Galston, thank you so much.
05:23It's been my pleasure.
05:24And we're going to be—