Transcripts For CSPAN3 Congress Political Parties Polarization 20240712

It will tell you every vote recorded for every office, from local dot catcher to the president of the United States, up until the 18 twenties. It will give every candidate. Whether the candidate is known anywhere outside his own family. If he got a vote, hes on that list on the website. Explore that, its fascinating. Its fascinating. You have to love our audience. They are better than google. What the day. . They have an answer about one of the questions. This is about the Church Services that were moved to statutory hall. You the first catholic to preach in the capital was the bishop of north and south carolina. He preached there on january 8th, 1826 for two hours. While. Now you know something that you didnt know. I would bet thats an episcopalian bishop and not a catholic bishop. It says the first catholic according to shane mccarthy. Mccarthy should know, right . He put his name behind it, so im just putting it out there. I buy it. Chuck, i think a couple of people asked about your book. Could you just hold it up again so people can see it . My baby. There, this is the book. It is available through the United States Capital Historical Society in if you go to our website, there is a sharp feature. You can get all kind of wonderful memorabilia of the capital. We have christmas ornaments made with marble from the capital, but we have fine books like checks books. If you want to get the book, come join us. If you want to be part of the continuing exploration of capital history, we hope you become a member and a supporter of the capitol historical society. Thank you very much. We appreciate. Check, we appreciate the depth of your knowledge. Sure. It was fun, thank you. Thank you. Take care. Byebye. Up next, the National Constitution center host a discussion on congress, Political Parties and polarization. From the time of americas founding through the civil war and today. This event took place on line due to the coronavirus. The National Constitution center provided the video. And now it is a great honor to introduce our guests. What an amazing panel. Americas most distinguished historians and scholars of congress to help us understand our current vacations. Edward ayers his tucker boat right professor of humanities and professor americas at the university of richmond. He is the author of many books on the civil war and reconstruction, including, and i will just highlight one of his many awardwinning books, the thin light of freedom, the civil war and emancipation in the heart of america. He discussed at the National Constitution center in 2017. His forthcoming book is southern journey, the migrations of the american south, 1790 to 2020. Edward ayers, welcome. It is a pleasure to have you. My pleasure, thank you. Joanne freeman this professor of American History and american studies at yale university. She specializes in the politics and political culture of the revolutionary and Early National periods. She is cohost with edward ayers of the popular American History podcast, back story. Its great to unite these coal pot castors together. She is the author of many books as well. Pat breaking, affairs of honor, National Politics in the new republics. As well as field of blood, violence in congress and the road to the civil war. Joanne, it is such an honor to have you with us. Thanks for having me. Norman ornstein is residents collar at the American Enterprise institute where he studies politics, elections and the u. S. Congress. His books include one nation after trump, a guide for the perplexed, the disillusioned, the desperate and the not yet departed. I love your titles. The next one we did at the Constitution Center and it depressed us before we began the program. Its even worse than it looks, how the american constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism. Very relevant for tonight as well, the broken branch, how congress is failing america and how to get it back on track. Hes a friend of the center and speaks frequently in our programs. Norm, great to have you back. Always a pleasure. Let us jump right in to the history of the violence that consumed the nation in general and congress in particular in the years leading up to the event to the civil war. Joanne, we will begin with you because your book, field of blood, described so vividly. The statistics you speak about our so striking. Between 1830 and 1860, you write that there were more than 70 violent incidents in the congress, senate house and Senate Chambers or in the streets and doing rounds. It was not confined to congress. Between july and october alone, there were 109 riots nationwide. Is it true there was more violence then, in congress in particular, but also in the nation in general as there is now . Why was it . And give our audience a sense how violence Violent Congress was. Sure. To answer the question first, this will be an obvious thing to say, but congress is a representative institution. So it does very much reflect the ethos of the time and the fact of the matter is, the first half of the 19th century as well as the second half were very violent. Some of the violence that you are seeing in congress is really representative of that moment. What i was interested in and what really drew my attention was the amount of it and the dynamic of it. You were discussing the years leading up to the civil war. It is worth noting the violence, or at least the extreme violence, really begins in the 18 thirties. Its not a constant wave. Its sort of comes and goes. What is the thirties and forties and fifties that see these incidents. What is interesting and logical is, if you track who is fighting who, initially you see one party finding another and then overtime, you see north versus south and slavery is at the center of the fighting. What struck me is interesting most of all and what really shows violence as a tool in the Antebellum Congress is southerners knew that they had an advantage to a certain degree because they were willing to dual. They were more willing to engage in hand to hand combat than some of the northerners. They used that advantage on the floor. They used it as a tool of debate. They would deliberately intimidate and threaten northern congressman and some of them would silence themselves or sit down or not stand up rather than risk either that threat or being humiliated in front of the public by being threatened and having to back down before it. Violence is shocking by itself, but what is particularly shocking is that it was a deliberate tool of debate. Over time, what happens is that by the 18 fifties, some northerners decide they can in be their tool to. That is such a powerful turn in the book when you describe how the decision of northerners to challenge southerners to duels actually decreased the violence. You quote from that remarkably moving letter which you sent moved to tears, when representatives Wade Chandler and cameron all pledged to challenge future jewelers to fight. When it became known that some southern senators were ready to fight, the abuse went on. I finally have to say that we have a wonderful in new exhibit on reconstruction. We have that yes stephens as cain. I quote your book when i tell the story about how some people would run for congress during that period on the grounds that my left hook is better than the other guy. I will beat him up because im tougher. He would bring that to life. Incredibly powerful. Norm ornstein, its often said or at least it has been said by nor brett mccarthy, whos a scholar at princeton, that we are more polarized today that and any time since the civil war. Youre such an expert of the party systems. Can you explain what it was about the Political Parties right before the civil war that led us to be so polarized then . You go back through history and we see echoes of so many of the divisions that are familiar to people today. If you look at the period leading up to the civil war, the party system, it was very much in flux. We had a wig party that ultimately was became and transformed into the modern Republican Party. Along the way, we had a know Nothing Party which was virulently anti immigration. The ire and focus was on catholics and some elements of northern europeans. They actually had a president elected on the no nothing ticket. Ultimately, it became the two parties that we know today or that we think we know today. Democrats and republicans. Of course, we have that overarching issue of race and slavery and the party struggled with that. For a while, the Democratic Party actually had a pretty strong pro, or and the slavery leaning. Others in the party, copper heads, who voted in a different way. It of course should down into a republican with Abraham Lincoln as the president. He became the force in the party against slavery. We will talk about how things changed in the aftermath of the assassination of lincoln and what changed with the reconstruction period. All of those things, which were life and death issues to so many, really created a level of polarization in the society that broke down obviously along regional lines. Those regional divisions continued to persist, but not necessarily in the same way as the parties change. The Democratic Party, which became a more dominant party many decades later, had a merger of southern and northern democrats. Those deep divisions that were there, the polarization and the society, the polarization of the parties, mccarthy is right. What we see now is something far more distinct than what weve seen since any period. Thats fascinating. Your teaching that the party system during the civil war period mirrored the polarization in society. That nicely reinforces joannes point that the violence in congress mirrored the violence in society. Yes. Ed, your book, the thin line of freedom, argues powerfully at every step that those who would advance freedom found themselves challenged and sometimes defeated. As history shows however, black freedom advanced faster and further than its champions dream possible because the opponents of freedom proved so powerful and aggressive. Tell us how it was that with each victory of the armies of the south that provoked northern support for abolition ism. Its an important story. If you could take us from the post civil war period through reconstruction, tell us about how the party system realign and the country became less polarized as support for reconstruction was ultimately abandoned. As norman was saying, the polarization inside the parties, between democrats and republicans. People would say democrats lost, they only have 47 of the vote. I think we have seen in our own time, that half the electorate doesnt just go away when they lose. In 1864, 10,000 votes indifferent is tricks would have given the election to the democrats. After all the suffering of the civil war. We forget that for a couple of burial its, Abraham Lincoln might not have been reelected. That northern difference is there. Northern democrats were as racist as white southerners and hated everything the republicans were doing. The war ends and the white south says weve lost. But in the meantime, lincolns election, Andrew Johnson becomes president , he seems to cut some slack for the white south. Great, lets push for everything that we can get. Lets put those black coats in there so we can reinstitute as much slavery as possible before the republicans come back into congress. Right now, that its quiet and the president is running everything. This also kind of sounds familiar to. Lets do what we can with this president. When republicans come back in, after riots in new orleans and memphis and widespread violence against black people across the south, republicans say we cannot have lost 350,000 men for this. We must restore the purpose of the war. The white south is just running roughshod. You white south keeps pushing and pushing nor the republicans say, okay, its going to take an amendment to the constitution that you have to support. You are going to have to allow black man to vote and to be delegates for those conventions in order to rewrite your constitutional before you can come back in. Youve shown us that you are not sorry at all. You admit that you were defeated, what you do not admit that you were wrong. You have congressional commissions that go out and talk to people across this up and say, what we are looking for is rebelism. The spirit that, even though they lost, they are still the rebels. The patterns that we still see playing out today where theyre. Im not giving up my heritage. Im holding on to this ice identity. As a result, you wouldnt have had the 14th amendment if the republicans had not felt that, if they did not revise the fundamental law of the land, the democrats of the north were going to join the white southerners and take away what was one with such loss during the civil war. That is what i mean by that. The 15th amendment because, we mean it, you cant take away the vote. Reconstruction begins ending almost as soon as it begins. In virginia, it ends by 1870. There are textbooks with the number 1877 in our head. But reconstruction begins to end in 1870 and 1871. Drenched in violence as well. The white south brings in the fundamental change in law recognizing that if you are a native born american, you have fundamental rights. That is a result of white southern recalcitrance. After reconstruction comes to an end, the United States settles into a pattern that is going to follow for a long time. Very closely contested elections with the south largely democratic. The north in the west republican. Those are the most closely contested or finally calibrated elections in American History. All during the period where people think nothing is happening. That its boring. In fact, the votes of a few thousand here in their could change the outcome. So its a fundamental restructuring, but the commonality from what joanne, norm and i are saying is, polarization seems to find a way to happen no matter the situation. Winner take all, two parties, us and them are shifting, but there seems to be a polarizing impulse in american political culture. So interesting. Thank you for all of that. What an important point. That it was the fear of losing the gains of the civil war that led the supporters of the 14th amendment to want to embody it in the constitution. We told a story about the debate between Teddy Stevens and he said will have the majority forever. He said we might lose it. You describe how that happened for so many of the gains of reconstruction. Warning that the losers may not go away gracefully is also very pressured and sobering. Joanne, we have a bunch of questions from our friends to you. Howard green says, when northerners are willing to fight back and southerners stop challenging, is that like facing up to a bully . What we also have a question about whether any numbers members of congress were trying to reach across the aisle during this time . A question about whether, in the prewar era, slavery was a catalyst of the civil war. Does any of that same provocative to you . Sure. The first question about the northerners and southerners. I would say the southerners dont stop biting, they are just sort of thrown off their feet. The northerners who have been caving in all along, suddenly, there are northerners fighting back. The word bully that is asked in the question is right on target. Thats the word that people use at the time for the people who are provoking these fights. Bully brooks, Preston Brooks who attacks charleston or, that was his nickname. Thats a word that is applied to people throughout this period. There was a sense that these people before the second half of the 18 fifties, that southerners were picking on people who could be bullied because they could not fight back in the same way. What that happens is that these northerners come. The northern congressman, they were campaigning on the idea that they were going to fight the slave power. Theres a reality to that in congress they meant it. Some of them came with weapons and literally made it clear. The document that you mentioned that i will confess made me sort of thierry, these three northerners explain why they will now agree to duel from now on. The part that really captured me is at the end, after describing this with all this emotion, they say we are putting this down on paper so future generations will understand how hard it was to fight slavery on the floor of congress. They make clear precisely what im trying to describe in the book. It is bullying, what happens when youre being bullied . I suppose this is a sort of simple answer. If you stand up to a bully, that sometimes a useful thing to do. I will also mention briefly the aisle question. Where theyre not people reaching across the aisle . They are were. After an amount of time, it became hard to do. You can see the mere hint at a certain point in the 1850s, that someone would reach across the aisle for someone else, is sometimes met by mockery. They will joke, but the joke will be you do that i think when congressman says to another, you do that and you better tell your kids to put their sunday best on because theyre never going to see you again. There were some people trying. Strikingly to me, people reaching across the aisle off the floor. They couldnt do it on the floor, in the public eye, with the press watching. So they removed themselves from congress and try to do it in a separate space. But by that point, those are not issues that can be compromised. Compromise is only possible sometimes in private during the constitutional convention. When everything is tweeted in realtime or when the press is watching during the civil war, that is more difficult. Completely fascinating. , norm, there is a series of questions Everyone Wants to talk about the president , and we will, but we have to learn our history at the same time. That is why im not jumping into modern questions right away. Many of our friends are asking, why is Incoming Congress standing up to the president today . Should this behavior have been immediately punished with fines or imprisonment . We also have a question from ralph hendrickson. How can congress regain its power over the legislative branch . Why is congress, especially the senate, now so willing to bow to the executive . Any president that has combined bipartisanship. Give us Historical Context please. Civil war seemed to be more willing to stand up to the president. Republican Congress Passed the Civil Rights Act of 1966 over the president s veto, president johnson, and indeed impeached him because of his distaste for his policies. Compare congress is willingness to stand up to the president , then and now and why. I will digress a little bit. I want to bring in a little more history to. One thing i would say to said the context is, theres a wonderful book called the First Congress. The First Congress did not consists of a lot of wonderful towering figures other than James Madison here or there. There were a lot of pretty mediocre people. They all saw that they better established this as an institution that meant something. That had respect. They did some quite remarkable things including the bill of rights. Because they had institutional loyalty and the sense that the constitution was going to work, they had to get it going. To step back a little bit, the constitution was set up through those compromises to give inordinate amount of power to the south. They knew it. It wasnt just the way that they set up apportionment of the socalled free fist compromise. The Electoral College, the nature of the house of representatives, it gave them a lot of clout and because of this determination to maintain slavery, and in the aftermath, reconstruction, in order to make sure they could recapture their power through Voter Suppression and the use of race. And i would remind people of another thing or something that most people do not realize, the house started with 65 members. It was kept in 1929 and 435. It actually did not change in size after the 1910 census. That was because the southerners saw that if they kept responding to the population by adding members, it was going to dilute their power and give more power to African Americans who were emerging. They figured out how to use their power of redistricting and apportionment. Used their ability to maintain control through basically keeping blacks from having any role or significant role in the south. They keep the law as such so that their word and be significant civil rights, which of course we did not get until the 1960s. Theres a lot of history here that we have to keep in mind. We also have to keep in mind it was those southern democrats who, from the 1930s all the way through a long period of time, 40 consecutive years of power in the house of representatives for democrats, where they could build a compromised coalition with northern democrats that maintained Voter Suppression and their role in the south. All the while giving democrats a power. In the aftermath of that as the south changed and our regions began to change, it was the republicans who moved in and took over from southern democrats and began to court voters in a way that was also focused around race and suppressing the power of race. I want to get all of them on the table. Now, what i would say about the questions that were asked directly is that we have moved from polarization to tribalism. That began much more with nude gingrich and his rival in congress in 1978 and a change in our politics. In particular, a change of the Republican Party but i would say bluntly, is more occult now than a traditional political party. What the framers builtin from the beginning, a recognition that you could end up with a president who would not behave in a fashion that put the entire country first. Who might look out for his own economic interests or his familys economic interests or subordinate the interests of the country to foreign powers. Sometimes for economic gain. They built in safeguards. The Electoral College was one. But prime among them was the first branch. It was elected independently. It was not beholden to a president. Because of a belief that the members would have what political scientists have called institutional patriotism. They would provide those checks and balances. If you have a party that subordinates its own institutional interest for that of a corrupt president or a cult. Then you will lose that fundamental check. If another one of those checks, the independent judiciary, is caste to the side with a desire to fill it with people who also will have loyalties that dont match what we believe should be an independent judiciary, you lose many of those checks and balances. Weve lost a large number of them now. The role of the senate to use the power confirmation about judges and executive officials. Of the congress to use the power of the purse to put some boundaries around the presidency or bad behavior by members of the executive branch. When those begin to shred, you lose control over the system and i believe that is what weve had in the last several years. Its not something that i think the framers wouldve viewed in a positive light. Very interesting. Some powerful statements. Following up on what you just said, someone says define the difference between polarization and tribalism. I heard norment saying, its the difference between a clash of ideas and just a clash of partisanship. Today, we are seeing people who are unwilling to buck their party in a way they were ready to do in the civil war. Congress took its institutional role more seriously, even with that meant disagreeing with a president from the same party. Just very quickly, if you view the other party as where the people who are all trying to solve problems, they just have misguided ideas, you can agree within what the problems are and then work through compromises and the political process where you can at least achieve some accomplishments along the way. If you begin to believe that the other party is a group of evil people trying to destroy your way of life, and preventing them from gaining power and keeping them down becomes a central goal. You will swallow hard and accept a number of things that otherwise would be unacceptable to you. That is where we are now and that is what i believe is the fundamental difference. That is amazing. I have to ask whether you think people were less willing to recognize people of the opposite party is people of good faith . Today than they were the time of the civil war. Thats an amazing statement. I will ask you to tell our friends were watching about the really powerful website that youve helped to establish electing the house of representatives. Where you seek to recapture the role of congress as an equal branch of government, worthy of study side by side with the presidency. You have granular data about how landslide president ial winds often failed to produce policy victories. You really need both congressional and both president ial majorities to get sweeping relegislative reforms. Political science is sometimes better than historians to look at long periods of time. We are good at looking at the contingency and the way things couldve turned out. You pull the camera back, you can see the patterns. Norm mentioned that the democrats maintained control of the house from 1954 through 1994. Think about all the things that were happening in america in those years. And yet, the apparent stability of partisanship. That is something to think about. We dont want to glorify that because that control in many ways was based on the south and its own kind of tribalism. When you have just white men disagreeing with other white men, for not doing each other, they can feel a kind of solidarity. Part of what we are seeing now is a political system that covers more americans. Thats obviously the way things should be. If you think about the stability in the house of representatives for decade after decade after decade, we want to point out that was, in many ways, kind of a deal in which the white south would get what it wanted. Being left alone with segregation as long as possible. At the same time, it would work the same before fdr. You would have elaborate deals in which different constituencies were served. I agree with what norm was saying. All the norms have fallen apart so to speak. The fact is, we dont want to forget that all american politics has been built on tribal identity. It was racial for most of American History. It was made invisible by disenfranchisement and suppression of voting. We are seeing that. The map that you refer to allows us to see how every Congressional District in the United States has voted from 1840 to the present. You can see which ones flip. I come from a very strange one in their. I come from the only Congressional District in the south that has voted republican since the civil war. People look at this later, not now, you will see in the corner of tennessee that theres one little red arrow. That is where im from. I want to Andrew Johnson Elementary School there. We had a republican identity. In my lifetime, to go from being republican in the 19 fifties in the south, and what being republican means today are entirely different. The labels. You will see people attacking democrats today who want to get rid of confederate monuments. All those guys were democrats back in the day and theyre being hypocrites. Being a democrat in the 18 fifties met and would being a democrat today means are entirely different things. I think being able to see the broad shifts and the greatest abilities involved, i dont know the never gives us any confidence that there will be stabilization. After the great transition of the south from democrat to republican, the system with Newt Gingrich coming in, there is a kind of disequilibrium that i think is feeding through the political system. That has many origins and social system. Fascinating. We will speak about some of those causes. We will post a link with you should explore. No surfing during class, you have to Pay Attention to the discussion. Joanne, one important theme that you raised in the civil war era and that is now relevant to polarization today is technology. The current polarization to a world, more people are more eager to argue to their base on twitter or even institutional responsibility. Talk about the role of media and polarization throughout history. Especially beginning in the civil war period. What can we learn from it . Sure. The moment that i find myself thinking about very often these days is the telegraphed. The rise of the telegraph as a form of technology. Before the telegraphed, there was a certain amount of wiggle room in congress. If you said something that you are sorry you said or did something that you are sorry you did, you could rush over to the reporter or Newspaper Office and change what you said a little bit. There was wiggle room. It was easier to keep things away from the public i think because there was a more limited number of reporters in washington. The telegraph fundamentally changed everything. It takes away the wiggle room. Theres 45 minutes and Everybody Knows about something. All of a sudden, there are all of these reporters in washington from all over the nation who can travel that far distance and stay there and telegraph back home what it is they are seeing. So congress, congress men lose control of the spin. If you think about congress ideally speaking, its supposed to be an ongoing conversation between the public and their representatives in one way or another. The public says what they want, representatives respond in some way, theres an election and he gets readjusted. Technology changes the conversation. There are moments, i think, and right now we are in a social media pseudoequivalent of the technology age, when no one quite understands the absolute given take of that form of technology and everyone is trying to master it and manipulated and take advantage of it. Then every now and again, something happens and you can tell that no one expected that to happen. If the telegraph were moved removed wiggle room, imagine now. Someone says something goofy had a private dinner and someone has their phone and tapes it and then tweets it or puts it on facebook and the entire world here here is it. That is a generation of politicians who lose control of the conversation to a certain agree. Now they are doing that and hyper speed. So we are at this moment where the conversation has changed fundamentally at a time when it is highly polarized. Everyone is othering everyone else. I am american and i represent america and you evil others who cannot be dealt with. That is a dangerous time to be in this moment of hyper speed. And then of course, it is made worse by the fact that we have the first president who is a tweeting president. If you think back a few years ago, people tried to figure out what that meant. Is it formal or not formal when you tweet . It is kind of mindboggling. I think we take it for granted, the degree to which a technology can fundamentally scramble the workings of democracy. I think that is some of what we are feeling our way through right now. Technology can scramble the workings of democracy is a good way of putting it. We are feeling it in a dramatic way. Norm, how did we obviate some of the polarizations the last time around . We saw similar pressures from technology and from fraying party systems, but nevertheless we evolved to the relative stability of the post war period. What kind of lessons of that reconstruction of the deliberative madisonian model could tell us how to get out of our currents are situation . It will not be easy to get out of it. I will say listening to joanne which was just wonderful, there is a little book called the victorian internet. Its a wonderful description of how the telegraph transformed the world and many people thought it would be just wonderful that we would be able to communicate face to face and wars would end and lots of things will change for the better. What we see now of course is that things can change for the better but they can also change very much for the worse. You can enhanced tribalism and division through that medium. I would say when we had parties that were broader tense, which is what we had from the period of the 19 thirties on. To some degree it was there before as well. When you had, in the Republican Party, we used to call them when i got to washington in 1969, we called the southern democrats ball weevils for the insect that infects caught in this up. We had moderate republicans from the northeast, the new england region and some from the midwest, a lot of them anchoring in the west coast which was a republican return back then. Washington, oregon and california. We called them gypsum opts for the one that infects hardwood trees mostly in the northeast. When we had this sorting and our parties did polarized ideologically, it created a real dilemma. We have leaders in an era that did not have the kind of populist surges, or at least until the late 19 eighties and 19 nineties where media and new media and cspan would exacerbate some of those this is divisions for example. We had leaders who understood large obligations. One of the things i would say, as we begin to talk or we have been talking about race is a dividing issue, we would not have had those dramatic civil rights bills. 1957, 1964, 1965, without republicans, northern republicans being decisive factors. It was dirks and in the senate. It was bill mccullough from ohio in the house who helped to make sure that you could overcome the southern democratic opposition to those things. But as we began to see these changes that polarized this further, the opportunity was there and exacerbated by technological change. Tribal media emerging. Talk radio as well as cable news, with leaders who found that they could gain power and advancement by adding to this tribalism and the Business Models that worked. That have had us kareen out of control. Without major changes in media, that will be very hard to bring about. Without this sense of a jolt. What i believe has happened now is that we have a Republican Party that i think is going to have to go through at least three elections in a row with losses. Not just in 2020, but in 2022 again. To begin to get traction back to what will be quite conservative people, but problem solving oriented and not willing to use some of these divisive things like race and immigration and the way theyve been used in the past. Begin to write the ship and move us back into a different direction. It is not going to come easily and its not going to come quickly im afraid. We have to brace ourselves for what is going to be an extended period of real challenges trying to solve the major problems that we have. Economic, racial and otherwise. Thank you for that sobering thought. Have a nice night. Exactly. Come up with another book title and ill take a xanax. Im working on a next one. Exactly. The kind of delusions part of our discussion. Several friends in the audience are asking, how big a crisis is this . Do you see a path to fix the problems in congress . Gerrymander districts, Voter Suppression, norm just suggested you need a total reconception of the way the parties relate to the media to get them to be able to begin deliberating again. Your thoughts on solutions and then i have to ask, because it is such a great shout out to your teaching abilities, hasnt Congress Given up its authority and created the imperial presidency they are complaining about . Thanks for that. I feel that its important to think about what is happening right now outside the political system that is going to have profound effects on the political system. Weve been referring to southerners as if they were white. Black southerners have moved american politics and its most progressive ways all the time from reconstruction. There is no 14th amendment if African American people make it clear they are willing to risk their lives to vote. Unless the testimony from all these telegraphs is that these people held in slavery for almost 200 years cannot wait to get into schools. To learn to read and write. They are incredible speakers. Reconstruction is not just republicans in the north. Its black people in the south who are putting their lives in the line on the line to show what they would do with american freedom. Then you take the people with the least power in american society, poor African American southerners. After 100 years of segregation and disenfranchisement, they are the ones who lead the great more revolution of the United States with the Civil Rights Movement and the Voting Rights act and Civil Rights Act that followed. That will not happen if they are not in the streets. Today, black lives matter is also showing, look, you have good luck. You are tied up in worrying about each others tweets. Meantime, we are dying. Things are going to have to change. I think im more optimistic through line through these stories is that the people who have been the most victimized by american political systems are also the people most eloquent in articulating the american ideals and ready to fight for them. You think about all this history and the constant surprise. Who wouldve thought just two or three years ago, that most americans would have supported weeks long protests against the police . Nobody ever has any idea what is going to happen. Its just one surprise after another. So here we have gone through this terrible period of dismay. We may be seeing the sprouts of a new era coming up. So that is before the nice words from my friend. That is what i was going to say. Is that we do not want to forget that along with every effort to disempowered people, they have taken it upon themselves to find power in whatever way that they can. And right now, it is to remove the symbols of the order that had held them down for so long. There is reasons to believe that there are regenerative powers in american democracy and worked, even now. That was a great answer. He was asking, why doesnt Congress Stand up for itself . I think youve given some good reasons for that. I think when people know that voters have their backs, they will. What you are seeing is that people are developing more courage when they know that they are speaking for a majority of people who want justice. I think you are going to see a new progressive era that is going to be coming very soon and it will be sustained for a long time by people for whom the events in the last decade have been the formative political experiences of their lives. I think looking at cycles, there is reasons to believe that some of the things that we have been worrying about may have a chance to heal themselves. We will see. Thank you for all of that. Joanne wants to add. I want to set something up, i have some questions and i know you want to respond, but. We cant predict history, but we can learn from it and contextualize it. I have to ask you, are things less violent today than they were during the time of the civil war to put it mildly . The protests have been, by and large, peaceful and we are not seeing people beat each other up in congress. So the first question is why is it that things are less violent now than they were then, if that isnt deed true in your view. And then i will just put on the table this big theme that susan raises, the drive to transparency and televising hearings in Political Convention seems to get in the way of deal making. Is there such a thing is too much transparency, and if thats true, then might the First Amendment prohibit any regulation of Media Technologies that would allow the kind of moderation and compromise that medicine expected . Okay, i will start with the there is a lot there. There is a lot there so i have to ask you to remind me but the beginning one i know was less violent now and why its a less violent now. I mean part of that, in a sense, is a very clear answer and that is the United States in 2020 in 1855 when during elections you have People Killed in polling places and, you know, there is an incident in washington in which a cannon shut off that immigrants in a polling place. I mean theres a level of routine violence that was very different. So in part, we are in very different moment. We are seeing, i think, more violence and more threatening behavior than typically we might expect to see. I mean that is part of what people are responding to. I think some of it is being encouraged and that is why it is there, but in one way or another, i think, yes, we are less violent but, yeah, we are also seeing a lot of extreme language and extreme behavior that goes beyond where, i think, we would be comfortable with under normal circumstances. As far as transparency goes, you know, that is the internal problem. Transparency on the surface of it is good. We all know it is happening but also just as you suggested and just as my book discusses. When things happen in front of the public eye that complicates them enormously so how do you balance the need to, in essence, work behind the scenes to remove things and bring it forward to presented in a way that the public is still responsible . I do not have a simple answer for that, i just think its one of the fundamental questions of balance in politics, generally, but particularly in congress which is so bound up with public opinion. You asked the quiet second question there i think, which i have now forgotten. Do you remember it . If not, im going to back to what i want to say before because i wanted to pull together what norman said. Pull away and i think this is the last round. Closing thoughts as well. Well you know norm was talking about run for your lives that we are at this moment were many bad things have happened in might happen and to find out how is going to take a lot of time and work. Ed was talking about the possible blooming of new kinds of progressive change. I suppose the way i think about this is, during moments of extreme, intense will change and unstable behavior, as ed said, we have no idea what is going to happen. We dont know this is all going to go down down the drain, we do not know if its going to all be okay. I do not think we can assume, yet, either one. What that means is, as unstable as things feel now, there is room for change and so what matters now is what we do in this moment, right . How we respond to what is going on now. How we realize the fact that whats happening now, things are changing. We do not know whats going to happen but there is room for growth in addition to collapse. I suppose the way i joined them together is just to encourage people to realize that it is vitally important that people think about this moment and its importance. Let their thoughts be known. Some of what we are seeing now is a great sign of that but its important for people to realize that they can help bring change and that things arent absolutely over with. Thats a wonderfully important note. All is and people can influence it, as you just said so powerfully and thank you for bringing things together so well. Norm, you are closing thoughts. I want presume to shake them but what would you like our friends to leave from this discussion . A couple of things, jeff. One is we can do some things, structurally, difficult as they may be. I was just a part of the American Academy of arts and sciences and we had a whole list of things that we could do. That include enlarging the house of representatives, altering the Electoral College, bringing us, if we could, a form of the australian system of mandatory attended in the polls and other changes in the institutions. There are things that can be done that would improve the process, improve elections, improving institutions but i also leave you with another challenge that we have. I agree with ed that we have so many positive things happening now including, i think, a wider awakening among many white americans that have been ignored for so long, that minneapolis and others have set out, that black lives matter is a meaningful phrase, not something to just push to the side or ignore. I think the immigration struggles taking us back to understanding what it means to have a larger and better society. The institutions that were built by the framers are going to be more distorted as time casts and has nothing to do with donald trump. By 2040, 70 of americans will live in 15 of our 50 states. 15 of americans in eight states. That means the electoral