Justin's Podcast
Dive into the captivating world of extraordinary individuals with "Interesting People," the podcast where host Justin Wallin sits down with some of the most intriguing personalities from all walks of life. Each episode unravels the unique stories, challenges, and triumphs of guests who have made remarkable impacts in their fields or led fascinating lives. From trailblazing innovators and inspiring artists to unsung heroes and enigmatic personalities, Justin brings you candid conversations that reveal the human spirit's endless capacity for wonder and achievement. Tune in for thought-provoking interviews, surprising revelations, and a celebration of the diverse tapestry of human experience.
Justin's Podcast
Presidential Race Dynamics and Digital Influence with Dan Schnur
Political strategist and professor Dan Schnur joins us to shed light on the electrifying twists and turns of the presidential race. Have you wondered why Donald Trump continues to captivate the Republican base despite legal hurdles, or how Kamala Harris is making waves with her historic candidacy? Prepare to gain fresh insights as we navigate this tight race, where polling margins are razor-thin and no clear leader has emerged just weeks before the election. Dan's expert analysis offers a unique lens on these political dynamics, unraveling the surprising resilience of these candidates and examining the evolving strategies they employ to reach beyond their core supporters.
We also explore the broader context of American politics, focusing on how both candidates are addressing critical issues like the economy and cost of living. The conversation delves into the role of digital tools and social media in shaping public engagement and political polarization, drawing intriguing parallels with past communication shifts. From the collective spirit of World War II to the challenges posed by contemporary global adversaries, this episode explores the potential for societal adaptation amidst division. Dan's insights provoke thought on how we can navigate these turbulent times, providing cautious optimism about our ability to adjust and thrive.
Welcome to Interesting People, the podcast where we delve into the lives and stories of fascinating individuals from all walks of life. I'm your host, justin Wallen, and in each episode we bring you inspiring, thought-provoking and sometimes surprising interviews with people who are making an impact in their fields and communities. There's only one common thread that the world is more interesting because of them. Get ready to be inspired, entertained and enlightened as we spotlight the extraordinary. Let's dive in. Welcome everyone and thanks for joining. I am joined by my good friend, dan Schnur.
Speaker 1:Dan has an illustrious career and has done a lot of things. So for those of you who don't know Dan, I'm going to read a little bit of his bio not all of it, because we'd be here all day. He's a professor at the University of California, berkeley's Institute of Government Studies, pepperdine University's Graduate School of Public Policy and the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications, where he teaches courses in politics, communications and leadership. He's also taught at a number of other illustrious schools. He's worked on four presidential and three gubernatorial campaigns.
Speaker 1:One of California's leading political strategists, one of the nation's leading political strategists and policy strategists in general. He's also run for office. He was chairman of California's FPPC. It goes on and on and on and on. You can find what he has written in any newspaper that's worth its weight, what he has written in any newspaper that's worth its weight. And he's on a number of different boards just illustrating his desire to do good for the community as well. So, in short, dan is a terrific person professionally, but as important, if not more important, he's a terrific person personally. And, dan, it's just a pleasure to have you on today.
Speaker 2:Likewise, justin. Thank you for the very kind introduction. I really appreciate it, but I really enjoyed the friendship we've developed over the years. I remember when our mutual friend John Thomas first introduced us and it's been great having the chance to talk politics and all sorts of other stuff with you over the years. So now we'll do it with an audience. Huh.
Speaker 1:Very much looking forward to it. It'll be fun. So I wanted to first start talking about the thing everyone's talking about, which, of course, is the presidential race and your take on that. It has changed a lot over the course of the past three months.
Speaker 2:Boy, if you go back even a little bit further than three months, if you and I had been having this conversation, let's say, 22 months ago, in November or December of 2022, we would have been talking about the Ron DeSantis versus Joe Biden campaign.
Speaker 2:That's right, and it wasn't that long ago. Not only that Biden was still a candidate, of course, but that the Republicans appeared to be ready to move on from Trump to DeSantis in the aftermath of the midterm elections, and so, to me, as history-making as Harris's candidacy is, both because of the way she became the nominee, but also, of course, her demographic background To me, it's just as fascinating how Trump managed to come back from what appeared to be a very, very difficult position just under two years ago and gradually put this back together. The end result, of course, is we have a tie, and while people like you and I scrutinize these poll results every day in all seven swing states, or any clues that I've resigned myself to is that none of them are telling us anything beyond what we know, which is that the race is tied or pretty close to it, with less than six weeks to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, every time you turn on the news you'll see someone desperately trying to make the statement, and they make the statement so-and-so pick a candidate. The latest poll is out, whatever it might be, and it shows a slight lead for name your candidate and of course it doesn't right. It shows a lead within the margin of error. I will say recently there were a couple of them that were outside of the margin of error, but it was just one survey. So it is fair to say that that survey shows a slight lead, but it is not fair to say that the candidate is in the lead, because of course those of us white hairs do these sorts of things is by looking at some form of an average right, because the single poll represents challenges. What do you think drove that dramatic shift for former President Trump from really being the backbencher? It seemed, for all intents and purposes, desantis had wins in his sales and now here we are.
Speaker 2:Boy DeSantis himself talked about this when he withdrew from the presidential campaign last year or earlier this year, excuse me and he pointed I think correctly and ironically to the four legal challenges that Trump faced around the country in New York and Washington and Florida and in Georgia.
Speaker 2:And what DeSantis said is he said I could not have anticipated the degree to which those court cases would have consolidated Republican voters around Trump's candidacy. Now my own feeling is I don't know that DeSantis is the most talented candidate in the world and in fact I'd say, with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, he might be the least talented presidential candidate we've seen in quite some time. But I think his point is the broader one. Whether it's him or Nikki Haley or anyone else who was a would-be challenger of Trump's, they might have been able to defeat him on a more level playing field. But as the party rallied together behind Trump as he faced those legal challenges and, of course, as his opponents were constrained and not able to weigh in against him on those, they were, of course, forced to stand by him also. It gave Trump an opportunity to come back that I don't think many of us would have expected, and we can add that to the list of many, many things about Donald Trump that many of us would not have expected.
Speaker 1:We're now with this tie between both candidates and it's interesting for a lot of reasons, but not least of which because there's a delta in favorability. Right, trump still is upside down with his favorability, as was Biden when he left the race, but now Harris, who was also upside down with her favorability and largely unknown, has closed that delta and she is either at parity in her favorability or slightly above. I forget the exact numbers, to be frank, but she's doing much, much better in the course of those weeks when she announced her candidacy or was handed her candidacy, and yet both candidates are tied. What do you think drives that? Because it's interesting. There's a lot of fervor and a lot of fluff about how, on the Democratic side, how compelling a candidate Kamala Harris is, and I think she's done her campaign, has done a wonderful job of curating her brand so far, but she hasn't been able to pop above this tie. What do you think is driving that?
Speaker 2:I feel like and you know this as well or better than anybody in politics, justin, look, a candidate in either party needs to do two things in order to win a general election.
Speaker 2:They need to motivate their base number one and number two. They need to be able to reach out beyond that base to persuade voters closer to the center of the political spectrum. What Harris did masterfully just in the first weeks of her campaign is she consolidated and motivated the Democratic base, young people, non-white voters, female voters, particularly single female voters. She motivated them in a way that Joe Biden simply could not and that brought her to even. And since then, she and Trump have been involved in a very pitched fight for those swing voters. In my class we refer to them as salvageables, not necessarily undecided voters, but voters who have in the past or voter groups who've supported candidates from both sides. And while she consolidated that Democratic base very quickly, not surprisingly, the struggle to reach out to that political side of those salvageables is much more of a challenge, and she and Trump are, are, are are fighting for that vote right now, which has us in the, in our, in our current deadlock.
Speaker 1:By the way, I love that term. Uh, I'm not going to say I'm going to steal it, cause I'll give it attribution, but that is fantastic. Salvageables, um, so that that's kind of the among the punditry. That's that's the discussion now is do they need to pivot to actually prosecuting their cases about the issues and outlining some sort of cogent approach to solving the issues that people care about, and we know the biggest one, which is the cost of living and the economy?
Speaker 1:And then, of course, there's a divide in terms of what the next ones are, depending on where you stand ideologically, and I don't think anyone would argue that either candidate has successfully made a good case for themselves being the best candidate. Yes, I mean, certain voters kind of view them in a box one way or another. But that's the I think, the intransigence in boy let me say that again six times between the two candidates. And does she need to pivot in order to break out of that tie? Or Trump pivot to break out of that tie and really make that case? Or can they continue on doing what they're doing? And we'll see light between the candidates.
Speaker 2:Well, she's beginning to, and you noticed very faint signs of it even in her convention speech, but since then she's probably accelerated that outreach to the center. She's running ads, talking about how she is a tough border state prosecutor. She told Oprah Winfrey that she had a gun at home and would use it on an intruder. Now I don't know if that demonstrates a lack of confidence in the secret service under just sort of a rhetorical leap for her, but either way, you see the effort, and even though neither one of them would certainly say it aloud, I think they both realize that they need to fill in blanks.
Speaker 2:We're doing this on Wednesday, the 25th of September, if I'm not mistaken, and yesterday Donald Trump gave a very broad economic policy speech. Today Kamala Harris is giving one, and the fact that they're both giving fairly substantive addresses on this issue 40 plus days before the election to me is the most compelling evidence to the point that you made, justin, which is that neither campaign feels like they've offered enough of a substantive argument yet. Trump has enjoyed an advantage on economic issues from the beginning of the race. Harris appears to have closed that slightly over the last few weeks, but the fact that you're seeing these two candidates so close to the election still laying out detailed policy on an issue that's so important to American voters seems to be a capacitive admission from both sides that they need to step up their games.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more. This election season, and really the last several cycles, there are two big themes. There's a lot of themes, but there are two big themes that I think we have seen that really stand out. One is the degree of Americans who are engaged and to some degree, to greater degree, informed about politics than they have been over the course of the past 20 or 30 years. I've personally never seen this in my professional life the degree to which people are actually aware of issues, engaged, participating in the elections at the local level, at the national level, and to me that is an extraordinarily positive shift and that is good for policy, it's good for politics.
Speaker 1:It is counterbalanced by an increasing degree of divisiveness, which I think we can all see Now. I don't know, as it is the most divisive America has ever been. I mean, we're students of American history and things got pretty frisky in the past. For a country that fought a revolution, it's hard to say that it's the most divisive it has ever been. However, it's pretty ugly, I think, by any measure. What's your take on that?
Speaker 2:I mean the state of divisiveness today how we got here, is it the state of play for the foreseeable future, and how do you view all of this?
Speaker 1:Well, big questions for a relatively short podcast I hold you in high regard, dan.
Speaker 2:No, I'm flattered and challenged, so I guess I'd offer a couple thoughts, and I'm immediately yours also. First of all, no question, you're exactly right, we are a deeply divided country, not just politically but culturally. You know, there's the old saying that culture eats politics for breakfast. We wouldn't be a divided country politically if we weren't divided culturally, and there's all sorts of reasons for that which might get us a little bit further afield than we have time for today. But I think your core question is the important one, which is is this unique and is it solvable? And you know there's the famous Mark Twain quote. Twain once said hipstery doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And what I take from that is while we haven't been here before under these exact circumstances, we've been here before and obviously, as you pointed out, we had not just an American Revolution, but we had a Civil War, right, right, it's funny.
Speaker 1:Right after I said that I realized I transposed the two, but they are similar. They were like-minded people.
Speaker 2:But both represented profound divisions in society. But even after the Civil War, the period of Reconstruction, that was a horribly divided time for our country In the 1960s. More recently, I saw an incredible story recently about the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The anti-war protesters were planning to put LSD in the water supply of the city of Chicago. Now that's a divided country and on a much more serious note, of course, we saw a presidential candidate and the nation's foremost civil rights leader assassinated within weeks of each other. In the 19-teens there was a period, the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which of course was founded during the Reconstruction. They enjoyed a resurgence in the 1910s to the point where at one point there were 75 publicly declared members of the Klan seated in the US House of Representatives.
Speaker 1:So this isn't it's astonishing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we've gone through this before and we tend to go through it cyclically.
Speaker 2:My concern and this isn't possibly a topic for another podcast also is, historically, what's brought us out of those times of division has been an external threat that's unified us. I call it the Mars attacks school of politics when invaders come from outer space, all the warring countries of the world unite to push back against this interstellar menace. By the same token, on a less ambitious scale, generally what brings this country together is a war, is an external military threat, both world wars, and to a lesser extent at least, at the beginning of the Korean War and the beginnings of the Iraq War, before, of course, they became divisive. I've seen pundits refer to our current tensions with China as the new Cold War, and while nobody roots for a Cold War, it's certainly preferable to a hot war, and so if the Cold War with the Soviet Union did provide that unifying influence for our country, at least in that Cold War's early stages, I wonder if rising tensions with China might play a similar role in the future, because otherwise the remedy for this historically has been international violence.
Speaker 1:Right. Actual conflict, actual engagement. Yeah, it's extraordinarily difficult to suss that out. The degree to which um, a cold war can, um and I'll just use that term, uh, for for conversation can, can do that right, because I agree with you that um, uh, it's, it's the freshness of it that brings people together. And maybe you're saying something differently and please correct me if I'm wrong, but this cohesion fades over time.
Speaker 1:When we look at World War II, there was a tremendous amount of cohesion, but it was also a relatively short period of time. There was a tremendous amount of destruction, but you know what was it? A quarter of the time of our most recent engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was relatively quick and so there wasn't the opportunity for internal divisions to really, I think, kind of spread and solidify. But we do see that with the Cold War itself, certainly over the course of time Obviously, you'd mentioned the 60s, that was right in the middle of it. Maybe the height of cohesion was throughout the 50s, as you say, during the Korean War, of course, another conflict, actual armed conflict, but it continued to be to some degree divisive over the course of time until the Berlin Wall fell. And now, to what degree does this specter of very real challenging on a global scale, certainly from China, certainly from Russia, but China perhaps being the most more capable foe of the two what that will really pan out to. It's a brilliant insight. It's a scary insight because one hopes that the cohesion can be achieved without actual the exchange of fire.
Speaker 1:What do you think about? Absent that? You know, know, right now there's an extraordinary amount of I mentioned the beginning there's, there's a greater degree of engagement from more americans, I think, than certainly in the recent past, and politically and policy-wise, um, that has its ups and downs. There's also a greater ability of, uh, more fiery politicians to engage on a nationwide scale via the tools of social media, which I'm not decrying. Social media, all tools can be used for a variety of different reasons, but it allows people to be remarkably effective in a very quick amount of time. Allows people to be remarkably effective in a very quick amount of time.
Speaker 1:So, with those kind of large colluding forces, if you will, I actually see through, perhaps, rose-tinted glasses. I see, over time, the greater mass of people being engaged and being interested in politics being a positive thing towards cooling temperament. I think at the beginning it kind of has an inverse effect to what you're talking about in terms of international conflict. I think in the beginning it tends to be more heated when people engage on any other thing, any hobby, any start running. You're really keen on running for those first several weeks, whatever it might be, but that cools over time and tempers tend to come down a bit and cooler heads prevail and a more even approach tends to approach. This is just in general human nature. That is my hope. I have absolutely no broad scale research to support that, but I have a theory about that. You think that's full of beans or this guy may have some water to carry.
Speaker 2:No, I think you're onto something here and I'll be eager to see the data when you do have it. But I think the key word you mentioned when you were talking about digital and social media, and I would agree with you. I think the benefits of these digital tools far outweigh the downside. But there really is a cautionary note to be had here, and the speed with which that information and opinion and invective spreads intensifies the polarization. There's no time for people to calm down. Ronald Reagan used to be saying that he would share with his aides during particularly intense times and he would say don't just do something, stand there, Take a deep breath, calm down before acting. And I don't know about you, Justin, but my drafts folder is my favorite email feature, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I can really get everything out of my system and then go back the next day and edit it. And of course, social media rewards just the opposite, and we can have a longer conversation about the problems that causes, how it intensifies and exacerbates the polarization we're talking about. But to frame this in a somewhat positive or at least less defeatist way is this isn't a new conversation. Once again, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. We had this conversation about cable television. We had this when people started watching either MSNBC or Fox. We had this conversation about television itself before my time, but I've read stuff about how people were convinced that television would just be the doom of society, at the same time that comic books and rock and roll music might have doomed society.
Speaker 2:Radio. My students aren't old enough to have ever heard of the Orson Welles broadcast War of the Worlds, which was fake news. All sorts of people around the country convinced that Martians were invading Earth because they were hearing a dramatic presentation of it. Today we'd know better, but in that time frame, 100 years ago, radio was such a new technology. People were still learning how to use it.
Speaker 2:There's a story in the New York Times from the mid-19th century warning about the damage, the irreversible damage that the telephone would do to society. We'll just sit in our houses and we'll never see each other in person again. That's right, exactly. And if you want to go back far enough, after Gutenberg invented the train press, catholics and Protestants went to war in Europe for the next several hundred years. So every communications technological breakthrough has led to a period of unsettledness until we figured out how to use it. And I'm optimistic, cautiously optimistic. There's no guarantee that just because we figured it out before we'll figure it out again, but I do figure, as we get more familiar with these tools, just like we did with the radio and the telephone and the rest, I think we'll get better at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, there's an ebb and a flow. Do you have just four minutes left? Absolutely Perfect? Because I wanted to ask one more thing about this and we could spend an entire day on it and I would enjoy it.
Speaker 1:But about the role of division, because there's something that catches um the eye my business is talking to people, right, and there's something that catches the eye of, uh, punditry on both sides, but it tends to be a little bit more on on the progressive side uh, about conspiracies and it's. You know, people will uh tend to say you know why are people believing this? Um and whatever it might be, um, you know, there was astonishment, uh, uh, uh by uh the talking heads about, um, you know, after 2020, how could a large group of of Americans, republicans specifically believe that the election was stolen? How could they possibly believe that when all the evidence truthfully, truthfully, points in the other direction? How can people not believe that vaccines are good for you? Name anything. I'm not taking a stand on them.
Speaker 1:Either way, my personal opinion doesn't matter, but I find it interesting that there tends to be on these items which, to me, are the kind of the flashpoint of divisiveness. They actually define the divisiveness of our age or these conspiracy theories. I always think it's very easy to dismiss them, but the wise policymaker it behooves them to ask why? Why do you think such a thing? And when you start scratching that surface, you realize that there's reasons. People have been call it whatever burned before. They've been taken advantage of before. They've been lied before, not just by people who create policy, but by their local governments, by trusted entities create policy, but by their local governments, by trusted entities, by corporations, whatever name your particular flavor. People have a long history of things not going the way they were told they were supposed to go, and that matters right. And my point is this is it worthwhile to listen to those things that sound fantastic occasionally, not necessarily to see if you agree with them, but to see if there's something more that is worth hearing?
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. I couldn't agree with you more. On the last day of every semester, I give my students one final assignment and I tell them I said this is the most important assignment I'm going to give you all semester long. But the frustrates me is I can't grade it because we're at the end of the semester. I said this is the most important assignment I'm going to give you all semester long. But what frustrates me is I can't grade it because we're at the end of the semester. I said here it is. I said I want every principal conservative in this room going forward to watch Rachel Maddow once a week and I want every principal progressive in this room to read George Will or Brett Stevenson or Ross Douthat once a week.
Speaker 2:I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm not even trying to open it. I'm just trying to remind you that, while it's really easy to point to the freaks on the other side and both sides have plenty of freaks there's really smart people over there too, and remember there's really smart people who don't agree with you and to be willing to listen to what they have to say. I think it is really important. Now your point, I think, goes a step further, which is it's not a bad idea to listen to the freaks too, because a lot of other people are, and if you simply dismiss them, they'll be that much more likely to surprise you at a time when you don't want to be surprised. So you don't have to agree with something in order to be exposed to it. I think you're exactly right.
Speaker 1:Dan Schnur, my friend. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it, Justin. I hope we can do it again. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to Interesting People. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast on your favorite platform, and don't forget to follow us on social media for updates and behind the scenes content. I'm Justin Wallen, and until next time, remember that the world is more interesting with you in it.
