Policy issues that impact you. Coming up, wall street journals reporter stephanie armour and amy goldstein. We will look at Health Care Changes under the Trump Administration and a republican led congress. Former administrator for the center for medicare and medicaid services. And former administrator for the administration, we will discuss the future of medicare and medicaid. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on monday morning. Join the discussion. Tomorrow, a look at the challenges for the incoming Trump Administration. Andncludes josh fulton staffers from the george w. Bush and obama administrations. That is at 3 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. , documentary contest is installed is in full swing. We are asking students what is the most important issue for the new president and congress to address in 2017 . Winner for herr documentary, help for homeless heroes. Fortner and producer, we covered the issue of Homeless Veterans on the streets of orange county, california. We decided these people who fought for our country and the fact they are now living on the streets, not handling not having family was not ok. We decided we are going to talk about this issue with in our community and we decided to make a cspan documentary. I encourage all seniors in put school and juniors to to use this platform to speak your voice, to say that your. Eneration deserves to be heard there is a better place to speak these issues. My advice for the students who are on the fence of doing this documentary is to really look into your community and see what is affecting those around you, because those are the ones you see the most. If there is an issue that you see happen on the street, that is probably where you can start. Be a part of the documentary because you want to be a voice for your community. Thank you, ashley. If you want more information on our studentcam documentary contest, go to our website. New York University school of law hosted a forum on the u. S. Political system and this panel debate whether a third party can succeed in a twoparty system. This is an hour. Good morning. On behalf of my supremely talented and collegial codirector of the nyu law schools legislative and regulatory process clinic, i want to welcome you to the inaugural session of the forum. The program today, a new political system promises to be very interesting and perhaps a bit provocative. This forum would not be possible without the generous support of Sidley Austin. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the cohead of their litigation practice and one of the firms national cochairs of its recruiting committee. Of particular significance to us, john is an active alumnus of the nyu law school. John. [applause] john thank you, sally. Sidley is thrilled to support the form which will be a robust negotiation a robust discussion involving the role of the state, local parties. Were honored to welcome Vice President biden today and thank him for agreeing to provide his insights as our keynote speaker. We are positive that todays forum should prove to be interesting, informative and enlightening on these and other subjects exploring whether we are on the vanguard of a new political system. A deepis a firm with tradition of Public Service and has been a destination for lawyers who have served throughout the government. Two of our partners will be moderating two of todays panels. Both have served in the u. S. Government. Rick is a member of congress and in the department of commerce. Several of our partners were important to ensuring that the forum move forward today and those are they have served at the highest level of the executive branch. Other prominent alumni who have served in the federal government under democratic and republican administrations, one of whom is president obama who was a Summer Associate in our Chicago Office years ago. As was the first lady who was an associate there as well. We are grateful for the hard work they put in and they have done a fabulous and outstanding job. In addition we are grateful to dean morrison for his support and vision for sidley and the to come together and make this forum a reality. We also wish to thank in advance terrific panelists without whom the forum should not be a success. Sidley has a wonderful relationship with nyu law. I am an alumnus and nearly 100 lawyers in a firm including 35 in our firm including 35 partners. Sidley is proud to partner with nyu and we know we can make a valuable contribution to the dialogue involving american democracy, citizen engagement, and Public Service. Over sidleys 150 year history, a fundamental tenet of our firm has been to honor and support the rule of law in this great democracy. The forum is an example of our continuing commitment to do so and we are very proud to be part of it. Thank you. [applause] let the program began. Assembles onpanel the stage, i want to introduce my introductions and the introductions will be brief because the full biographies are listed in your program which you should have received at the Registration Table which remain out there. We are going to hold our panels to roughly 50 minutes and allow 10 minutes for time for questions from audience members. We have students assembled on the rails on both sides with cards and pens. You have a thought, you raise a hand and one will come and send this to you and we will be able to ask those questions. It is wonderful to have rick here. He was a member of the u. S. House of representatives for 28 years where he chaired the subcommittee on communications and the internet. He currently chairs the Government Strategy practice in the Sidley Austin washington office. All set . Go. Thank you. It is a privilege to take part in the forum this morning. I want to say a word of welcome to everyone in the audience, to our first panel which focuses on the role of the Political Parties. The november election certainly defied the expectations of many. And by almost all accounts, it was a seismic political event, but what are its invocations what are its implications for the future of our Political Parties. What role do they play at a time when super pacs are prominent and major funders of the candidates directly without Party Intervention . Are the parties stronger or weaker than they have been historically . Is the situation ripe at this point for the emergence of a Third Political party . How have past reforms work . Reforms worked . Would future reforms strengthen parties and with a country to a stronger democracy . Are the parties at risk of losing aspects of their constituency . In order to answer these and other questions, we are joined today by a truly distinguished panel. I will say a word of introduction about each of them at the outset. Ben ginsberg is a partner at jones day and a former National Counsel to the bushcheney and the romney president ial campaigns. He is currently counsel to the republican Governors Association. We are joined also by richard hill does, professional of constitutional law at nyu. He is a litigator and a widely read other on legal and policy issues concerning this the structure of democratic institutions. His acclaimed casebook, the law of the rocker c, legal structure the law of democracy, legal structure of the political process launched an entirely new field of study in law schools across the country. We are joined by david keating, executive director of the club for growth. He previously served as executive Vice President of the National Taxpayers union and executive director of americans for fair taxation. He is also known as the man who invented the super pacs. The full bios are bound into the are found in the program and if you would like to learn more i would invite you to read them. It has been suggested that donald trump whose positions crossed Traditional Party lines, part of his platform evolves from republican principles, part from democratic principles, part are pretty much his own is truly perhaps the First Independent american president. He energized his own following. He largely financed his own campaign for the nomination. He staged a hostile takeover of one of the Major Political parties. Ben ginsberg, is that an accurate description of what happened . And i will expand the question by asking, did the Democratic Party also come close to a hostile takeover by Bernie Sanders and his supporters . And what are the implications of these very unusual events for the future of elliptical parties . Future of Political Parties . Ben that is fine if that is where you would like to start. I think donald trump has succeeded in triangulating all the party alignments. It is tough to know what the base of the party is, what the core constituencies are. I take a little bit of exception to the assumption in the question, if you look at the way donald trump has named his first 15 cabinet people, which is a fairly traditional act. You have three generals in National Security positions. We are perceived as the party of the billionaires although we can argue with that. You have seven or eight people who are people with who are loyalists to donald trump and have Movement Conservative credentials. That looks like a traditional government at least in the first 15 of the 660 people who need to be nominated by the senate. But just to make one other point. I do think in this political cycle, the Party Structure splintered a lot more than it has in the past. You are seeing an evolutionary period that started in the 2004 election where the Party Structures are much more diffuse. It is much tougher to have principled governing coalitions in the congress. I think you have senate and House Campaign committees that take care of u. S. Senators and u. S. House people. You have a Governors Association and attorney generals association. It is not the democratic and Republican National committees who are the core political boots on the ground, money to the candidate, tv ads on the air that they were prior to the passage of mccain. Mccainfeingold. You do have a changing structure. Cooks your view of whether this was a major hostile takeover of this your view of whether was a major hostile takeover of a major Political Party. The larger framework within which i was where then which i would situate what is going on, we are seeing what i view as the political fragmentation of american democracy. Not just american democracy, of democracies around the world. What i mean by political fragmentation is that the traditional sources that organized governance and organize the political process, and election, had their power and their authority diffused in various ways. It has been diffused externally. We have seen tremendous diffusion of power away from the parties to these outside groups. There has also been an internal diffusion of power within the parties in the sense that the Party Leadership no longer has the kind of control over the members that the leadership once had. Individual members of congress are much more independent entrepreneurs than they used to be. That is how i view donald trump and Bernie Sanders. I view them as independent, free agents. Sanders is an independent, never was a member of the Democratic Party, is not a member of the Democratic Party. Trump was a republican, a democrat until about 10 minutes ago and then decided it was advantageous to run as a republican. The parties have become so hollowed out that it is possible for free agents to capture the party label for their own purposes and agendas. I think that has happened for two general reasons. One is institutional changes we have made. Particularly with respect to the nomination process for choosing the candidates. We have completely taken that process since the 1970s out of the hands of the parties. We have stripped the parties of any meaningful role whatsoever. In that process, when we went with a system of pure primary dominated or populist election processes for choosing the nominee. Surprise, surprise when you shift the nomination process to one that is a populist controlled process, through the primaries you are going to get much more populist kinds of candidates. Finding it easier to emerge from that process. There are other changes institutionally we have made. The second set of changes are cultural and technological changes which we are aware of. The Communications Revolution and the Technology Revolution have undermined the authority of all sorts of organizations whether it is the parties, churches, academic institutions, corporations, it is now possible to bypass the traditional organizational structures. That is why people like ted cruz and liz warren, one year into the senate become two of the most powerful figures in the parties in a way that was inconceivable for someone like lyndon johnson, as powerful as he was, in our politics in the past. It is possible for people to find their National Constituencies through social media, to raise money through the technology that is available, and free themselves from the traditional sources of control that the party has exerted and the traditional support the parties provided. What were saying is this what we are seeing is this political fragmentation that empowers lots of individual actors, strips the mediating institutions like the parties of a significant role. And somewhat inevitably, is going to be fueling more extremism and more polarization. Lets take off from one of the points you mentioned. The fact that with super pacs directly funding candidates and otherates looking to sources outside the party. David keating, do you believe that the parties are relevant as funders . That has been a traditional role of parties. How damaging is it to the Political Parties that perhaps that role is eclipsed to a significant extent by external Funding Sources . And do you think parties perhaps have been weakened by virtue of the fact that candidates can now so directly communicate with voters on their own. I am reminded of this to trumps twitter following of Something Like 48 Million People that gets that gives him instant access to a very large part of the electorate. What is the effect of those changes on Political Parties . I will see if i can remember all of the questions. For president of the center competitive politics. I used to work at the club for growth a number of years ago. And then also i wanted to make sure that it is clear to people, super pacs can not directly fund candidates. They are independent groups only. They cannot coordinate with the candidates or the parties. There is a long list of roles that i am sure ben and i could give a seminar on those someday if the player interested. These are independent groups. They are people getting together with other people and talking to voters and urging them to vote for or against particular candidates. I think on the previous question, i agree with virtually everything that rick and ben have said. In terms of the individual members, congress, and candidates they have always been to some degree entrepreneurs. Otherwise they would not gotten elected in the first place, but i agree that changes in Campaign Finance laws and the advent of media and the atomization of media has made it even more likely that these candidates can emerge and spring out of nowhere. In terms of the parties, i do not think the right approach is to somehow blame independent groups. These are groups of citizens to groups of citizens after all. The real problem is that the Campaign Finance laws have undercut the ability of parties to organize americans and speak out together. If you look at especially, the Democratic Party is hurting right now in a big way. You look at their bench at the state level, the state legislative level, the gubernatorial positions they hold, and it has been a wipeout in over the last eight years. One of the big factors i think that is hurting parties that people do not talk about very often is the incredible complexity of the Campaign Finance laws, especially on state parties. Much of the political activity of state parties now has to struggle, not only under state laws and regulations which are obviously bad in many places, but the federal laws. A lot of the state parties are crushed by regulation. I think we have got to simplify Campaign Finance regulation in a big way. The extent we can lift contribution limits, maybe take them off altogether on Political Parties, that would be much more important. That is a much better way to go than trying to figure out how to push down independent groups. Ben ginsburg, lets continue that discussion. What do you see being very constructive in terms of change in the law that would make the funding of campaigns by the parties more effective . For example, each of the National Parties has an independent expenditure committee. If you count all the various ones that are in existence, it is about six in total. Does having these parties spent spend significant sums in isolation without coordinating the Central Party units, a a sensible a sensible way to do things, would it strengthen the role of the parties as funders if they were able to coordinate more directly at least internally . Your views on what could happen in terms of making the parties more significant in terms of funding campaigns. To answer that, you need to take a stark look at the system as it exists today. Which is in limiting candidates and Political Parties and what they are allowed to raise, but with none of those limits stretching back from buckley versus vallejo and citizens united, you have a system of limiting what the actual actors in a campaign can do. The candidates and the parties and not limiting special Interest Groups who can raise unlimited amounts of money from sources the candidates and parties cannot. You have a system where the candidates have agendas set by outside groups as opposed to being the loudest voice in the debate. If you were going to help strengthen the parties, you would look at the three Core Functions that parties historically have performed. They have raised money for candidates. It is no longer done primarily by the party. It is no longer done by super pacs and expenditure groups but it is done by a Large Membership organizations on the left and right who will mobilize their members to give contributions to candidates they like. The candidates will go to special Interest Groups rather than the Political Parties. They will owe their allegiance not to the broad governing coalitions of the Political Parties but to the groups that helped fund them. The mobilization efforts these days as david correctly pointed out really are not done by state parties because that is now a federalized process with limited contributions. If i want to put out a message as a state party that says vote democratic, i now have to use all federal dollars, i cannot use state dollars even though that message indisputably helps state candidates as well. Federal dollars are limited. Each state has its own set of laws. That has in turn been outsourced either to campaigns are two campaigns or two special groups to special Interest Groups to do the mobilization and ground game. The third core function of parties was always doing the messaging to help their candidates. That too, outside groups have more money to put into that process than the parties do. Parties are limited in the amount that they can spend directly on their candidates. It on their candidates. It is the coordinated expenditure limits, it is it has not been increased except for inflation in many years. Certainly not kept a proportionately with the cost of campaigns so the parties do have these independent expenditure units. Still much smaller than what outside groups can do. The units are not allowed to talk to the core group so there is bizarre messaging that takes place. Sometimes you get a party committee, expenditure messages that are not what the campaign and the candidate would like. It is a messy end nonsensical system if in fact your goal at the end of the day is to have members who get elected pay some degree of adherence to core Party Principles than a big tent in a big tent as opposed to individuals special Interest Groups that are groups the core of finding candidates. Are there changes in finance that can strengthen parties . I want to push this to a more cultural or conceptual level for a second. So many americans, particularly younger americans hate Political Parties, have come as contempt for Political Parties. You see the figures about the plurality of voters under the 35, registered independent, not as one of the party members. In this discussion, it is important to step back and say more about why the parties are so important despite all of the awful things that are true about them. One standard point is that unless you have strong Political Parties, the private interests are going to carve up the government. Individual politicians who have to stand there on their own without a strong hardy apparatus Party Apparatus are extremely vulnerable particularly in the united states. They are more vulnerable than house additions and any other country, especially in the u. S. House. They have to run to elections ,very year every two years primary and a general election. They mostly raise their money independently. They have to do that. So they are constantly vulnerable. And what strong Political Parties that can take concerted positions and defend their members is protect these honorable members when they take difficult votes. The second thing is in our separated power system, this s the second thing is in our separated power system, this s system cannot function unless we have a certain degree of compromising typically across party lines. Unless you have unified government large enough to overcome the filibuster in the senate and that compromising is very likely to come, in my view, from Party Leaders who, with if they are Strong Enough to make these compromises, as tough as they are, ring their members along and protect those members. The fragmentation i am talking about makes our system also not just more extreme but more dysfunctional and more paralyzed. When we talk about strengthening parties, it is important for people to understand why it is so important to be doing that. I think that along the same lines of the measures that ben has described, trying to channel the flow of money into the parties, and away from these outside groups, those people still want to give, they should be free to do it. We have created these incentives that force them to go to the outside groups including people who would rather be giving the money to the Political Parties. We can allow greater coordination between the parties and the candidates and allow greater coordination across national and state parties. Here is an extreme suggestion just to get people to think in a framework. When we talk about Public Financing in the few states that have it and there is more interest in that in the various states, it is about financing where money goes to individual candidates. We could think about Public Financing where a lot more of the money goes to the Political Parties which is the way that Public Financing works in most democracies which have Public Financing. Empowering the parties through a Public Finance system that does not get to be so individual candidatecentered but tries to empower these organizations that i think are absolutely essential in any healthy democracy, but particularly with our separated power system. What do you think about allowing more coordination internally within the parties with in terms of how the funding flows, is there harm in that, or do you still prefer that the external role take prominence . David it is amazing that we say to Political Parties they cannot coordinate with their candidates. Who came up with that idea . It really makes no sense. A party is going to corrupt its own candidates . That is silly. I think they should take the coordination limits off completely. Especially if we have a contribution the contribution limits we have today. There is lots of things you can do, i think. If people are concerned about the ability to raise super large chunks of money then say to the candidates and elected officials mother cannot, let the parties get more money, let them coordinate with their candidates. There is a bigger problem and i think ricks analysis is very much on point here. There is also a tradition that has developed in the Party Parties itself. They can protect their own candidates in the general election but when it comes to the primary election, there is a lot of internal pressures on the Party Parties not to get involved in primary races. It is interesting to watch that politically. In the president ial race, look what happens when the wikileaks emails came out. It was clear that the dnc was on the side of clinton behind the scenes and it caused a huge reaction. Last year, think it was last year when senator mcconnell like to make it easier for parties to do things, there was a big loeb among the tea party blowup among the tea party because they were concerned the parties would be able to intervene in primaries and they were saying no, we do not want to pass this. I have seen this recur at the state level as well as in terms of liberating parties. A lot of the concern from the more right wing republicans is they do not trust the Party Establishment and they do not want the parties to intervene. There is a tradition that they not do so but there have been fights to oppose the legal means for parties to intervene in primaries. That would only solve half of ricks problems if we loosen the rules, we allow parties to courtney with their candidates but there is still going to be a lot of pressure to not protect these Vulnerable People in a primary situation. We seem to have a consensus that more coordination internally among the parties would be sensible. We saw something pretty unusual in this president ial race. On the republican side, many people who would be defined as traditional business persons deciding not to support the republican president ial nominee. Making public statements to that effect. Many others who had nothing to say publicly or privately expressing a lot of discomfort in the way things were going on the republican side. On the democratic side, we saw people who classically have been democrats, bluecollar workers, People Living in rural areas who historically in many places had been the core of the Democratic Party mott defecting en masse to support donald trump and his campaign. What does this say about the future of coalitions within both parties, is there some risk that these core coalitions might defect and are the circumstances right now for a thirdparty to arise based on these and other factors . I will make this a jump, who wants to go first . On the third party angle, as much as i personally might want to see a thirdparty, i am one of these people who has been registered as an independent for a long time. I do not like a lot of what both parties have to say. I do not see that it is possible under the campaignfinance regime that we have to do it today to get a third party going. I am not saying it is impossible. It is difficult to start with politically. When you look at the campaignfinance rules, it is even more difficult. I do not see that happening. To me, one of the interesting things about the last couple of weeks, to shift to the other part of your question, there was a lot of discussion that the Republican Party was going to go so far off to the right it would become irrelevant. And with the democratic shifts occurring, the Republican Party might disappear in some fashion. I think this whole script has been flipped. There is a huge amount of upside for the Republican Party with trump. I am not predicting it. I do not want people thinking im predicting it is going to happen. The democrats are in serious trouble. One, from a lack of [inaudible] but trump has been able to flip a number of states. We have already seen West Virginia go from a totally solid democratic stronghold. Now their publicans control both houses of the legislature. It has voted for republicans solidly in several campaigns. And then you look at the other core constituencies, hispanic, the africanamerican community, i know this is hard to imagine but it is possible trump could make inroads there is well. We have already seen him make inroads into the working last. The Democratic Party and especially as it continues to shift, senator to the Bernie Sanders, senator warren left could be in real trouble. If trump turned out to be a terrific politician, we simply do not know what will happen with that. You are talking about centrifugal force possibly throwing off a male major coalition. What about in the Republican Party, will the Business Community remain entirely within the fold . I think they will because the Democratic Party, if you look at the policies and a lot of the things the party and the elected officials in congress have done over the last decade, as bad as the republicans might get on many issues important to the is this community, the democrats are not giving them anything, either. They do not have anywhere else to go. Rick think about how much Donald Trumps coalition represents what had been the old Union Democratic coalition and terms of substantive policy issues. Against free trade, restrictions on immigration, protections of entitlement. We are in the midst of something we obviously do not understand but absolutely, i think we could be in the midst of a significant reconfiguration of both clinical parties in a way that would unscramble the polarized structure we have had over the last 30 to 40 years. I think that democrats make a big mistake in assuming as some of the analysts have posttrump that the demographic still favor the Democratic Party over time. The hispanic population is growing, minority population is growing. That assumes that these groups will continue to vote at the same rates for the Democratic Party that they have been recently. I think if Republican Party manages to cement itself as the party of workingclass which is a pitch trump is trying to make, i think, adopting a lot of traditional workingclass issues, once the incendiary rhetoric and the polarizing rhetoric is not there because some other candidate who is a republican carries on down that path, it would not surprise me to see other workingclass voters beyond white, workingclass voters moving in that direction. Trump already got two points of the latino vote than romney did, too many peoples amazement. And protectionism, the various kinds of things trump is doing, the antitrade agenda, that may very well push more of the Business Community toward the Democratic Party. It has been moving in that direction to some extent already. I do not know how to envision how these coalitions will or will not come together. What is happening right now is the biggest disruption to the established set of coalition structures that we have had since reagans election. And it is going to have profound effects on both parties as they struggle to redefine their identity in response to whatever policypolicymr. Ginsberg i think both parties coalitions are under a lot of stress and strain. The triangulation donald trump has achieved by surprising everyone and winning those states in the upper midwest with noncollegeeducated whitecollar workers, is true. The other thing that donald trump showed is you do not need the three legs of the rake install to win reagan stool to win an election as a republican. It seems to me the Democratic Coalition is equally strange in its own way. The three legs of the rake install to win reagan stool but largely between a donor class that has wanted candidates to stress things like Climate Change and social issues and unionbluecollar base that was not terribly interested in those to stress things like climate issues. You have got a country if you look at the red and loop maps is blue on the coasts and pretty solid red everywhere else, with the exception of a couple metropolitan areas in the midwest. In the leadership, the face of the Democratic Party in congress is a coastal face. Every leader of the Democratic Party, Chuck Schumer in the senate, nancy pelosi and steny hoyer in the house, are from the coasts. So that is a huge change and a huge strain. It seems to me the best legislative strategy that the democrats have and what i think should worry both the trouble administration and the Republican Leadership is the ability to triangulate on policies that donald trump favors that are not core republican, conservative issues. And you have already seen that a little bit in the back and forth on the trade deals. You have seen it when you talk about infrastructure, something that democrats have historically supported, and donald trump supports, but deficit hawks are going to take a different view of massive infrastructure spending. While our footprint should be overseas, it is another issue that could be triangulated and just wait until carried interest comes up as an interest issue if you want to see some strain. I would agree with the point you never know great change when you are in the middle of it and we may be in the middle of it and not fully cognizant of how great that changes. One statistic to drive the point home. I put together numbers of the vote for clinton and trump in of, manhattan, and california. When you take brooklyn, manhattan, and california out of the election donald trump one the rest of the country byy nearly 3 million coasts. You say just the coasts, brooklyn, manhattan, and california gives you that picture from and you know some of this data, if you look across the country, so it is a mistake to focus just on president ial elections that industry and to understand the struggle that the parties are going through, particularly the Democratic Party. 66 state legislatures now controlled by the Republican Party. Donald trump won virtually every county that obama won only once, which is 207 counties. Of the 709 counties obama won twice, trump won 30 of those. Donald trump one ohio by 40 50,000 votes. That is staggering. So the problems about Democratic Party and its base in new york city and california at a couple of other places is a very serious problem that the party has to be confronting. And Republican Party deals with the incredible internal struggles it will be going to under president trump. You will see this usually in a midterm election, the party in power holds the white house, uses seats. Justified kind of chance, the senate time is very tilted republican. 10 of the democratic incumbents who are up in states won i trump by trump. This late in election cycle, the congressional cycles are pretty locked in so that you are looking at a now you would not see this sort of historical course correction it comes midterms. Mr. Pildes lets link this into the point about the state parties. One of the reasons the Democratic Party or the Clinton Campaign may have been was fully unaware of what was going on in places like wisconsin is because of what dave was talking about, and i was taught this point. Because the state parties just do not exist in any robust form in a lot of places now, the campaigns, at least on the democratic side, are run out of a center in brooklyn with lots of data analytics, but not really connected to what is going on out there in wisconsin or in michigan. They are not getting the input that they used to get from state Political Parties and key figures locally in the same way. And the decline of the state parties may be connected to the way these campaigns are run, what they miss about what is going on with big blocs of voters. So i think it is interesting to draw the connection as a threat through this discussion. In the election just passed, the democrats had no messages directed toward rural areas, and mr. Trump focused on the rural vote intensely and had a message tailored for people primarily who are bluecollar in rural areas. And results were pretty dramatic. He carried the world counties all across america. To the democrats, as part of their efforts to regain prominence and to solidify their historic coalitions, they need to develop a world message. What could it become an can that be done consistently with the democrats continuing their strong appeal to people in the metropolitan areas across the country . Who wants to try that . I have no idea. I am not sure anyone knows. I think it goes back to the problem of the state parties. They have been hollowed out. And if you are going to develop a message for the world areas, you have to have people in the rural areas, and you have to have some functioning Party Structure there. They have been hollowed out. It is not only matter of resources or this idea federalizing all the messaging at the state level i mean if you were sitting around a laboratory what can we do to destroy state parties cannot what can we do to make it difficult for volunteers to get together, i have a great idea, lets come up with a set of rules that no one can understand if they have people like ben ginsberg advising them at every step of the way. Ben is a very talented fellow. You do not see ben ginsberg in some world counties somewhere that does federal Election Campaign regulations and is really ready to do it on a voluntary basis, they still would not be able to follow the advice. It is hard to overemphasize how bad the situation is. Mr. Pildes lets set this in the situation of what is going on. This is a problem affecting democracy everywhere. It is a big part of the vote for brexit. The rural areas that are alienated. It is a big part of that just took place in italy. It is the rural areas. This is a problem affecting what is happened over the last 20 or 30 years, for whatever set of reasons, is there has been more and more concentration of power, financial power, cultural power, political power in the dominant cities. And were rural voters, whether england, france, italy, the united states, feel increasingly alienated from power, ignored by those in power, condescended to by those in power, responded to by those in power, and this is a global phenomenon that has to deal with the transformation of how people live. So it is not just a problem here for better or worse. It is a profound problem for democracy across the world these days. Mr. Boucher we only have a few minutes left, and we would like to offer an opportunity for anyone in the audience who has a question. So sally is behind me. She will moderate this portion. Sally i had a series of questions, and this will not be quite onesecond answers, but if you can keep your answer short. The Campaign Finance laws were primarily connected to diminish corruption. No one on the panel has even mentioned corruption when discussing them. Were we wrong or have we just given up . Anyone . The reality is the standard is corruption or the appearance of corruption. So there have been precious few cases of actual corruption, but a lot of newspaper articles written about the appearance of corruption. And in effect, even if corruption or the appearance of corruption is what you are trying to start them you now have a system where the candidates are limited in what they can say, special interviews that special interest scanned set the terms Interest Groups can set the debate. I do not believe that was a virtuous entered begin with. It has been proven in fact him and that is a rationale has led to what is a really distorted system now. Mr. Boucher other comments . I do not think there is no evidence that contribution limits have reduced corruption, and theres no evidence that contribution limits have increased trust in government, and many studies have been done to track this, both the federal, but especially at the state level where states changed over time. There is no evidence. What people need to do is ask themselves today, do we have a better less corrupt fatah politicians than we have had less corrupt class of politicians that he we have had then we have had . Sally and given the presence of such different candidates are in the primary, should party leisure continue playing a neutral role in primaries instead of unflinching rallying around certain nominees, or would be better served throwing their resources behind the favorites . In other words, come clean with what they want . It is a good question if they are fighting over it. Mr. Ginsberg my question is what resources. I am not sure how parties were capable of weighing in on the president ial level, and when you get down to the senate and house levels, they are there were attempts by leadership for the super pacs or groups like the chamber of commerce to go up against Tea Party People who won in 2010. It depends on what level you are talking on, and on the National Committee level, not much resources, legibility to impact it. More on the senate and house with incumbents. Let me just add a quick point. I find it remarkable because people have been involved in politics and they keep asking me, what is wrong with republicans or the democrats . Why are they coming up with candidates like this . There is this impression in the public that somehow the parties can control everything. That is about as far from the truth as the reality. The impression is almost exactly the opposite of what the reality is. Mr. Pildes this goes back to my opening comment about the change in the way to primaries were. The about how bizarre this is. The Democratic Party cannot keep an independent from running for the Democratic Party nomination. In fact, if the democratic National Committee tilts the deck against the independetn thats is a, scandal. Think about it on the republican side. You can walk in republican officers how was the Selection Process done or who showed up on the main stage for the debate . By popular opinion, the media ran this. The party has no control over that. One of the things i am suggesting that will not happen, but that we think about legitimating a greater role for the party and the selecting or participating in the process of their reading the field, selecting nominees who run under the party label, as was the case for most of American History until the 1970s. Sally let me ask a question which is linked to a panel later this afternoon. You have talked about a you talked about the parties not having money as the case maybe. His money as important to campaigns when advertising seems to be fixed through twitter, reddit, etc. . Mr. Ginsberg im not sure i agree with this. There was a fascinating program at stanford on friday, which among other things the trunk Campaign Trump Campaign Said they spent an equal amount on Digital Communications as broadcast communications. Im not sure the message is being driven so much by this independent site as much as campaigned slowly shifting to actually spending the money on digital, which the media has not really figured out how to track to those spending numbers that are not immediately visible to anyone. There is a change in communications. I still believe it is being driven by the campaigns. Sally some money Still Matters . Mr. Ginsberg money Still Matters. It is not the only thing. Jeb bush had the most money initially. What did he get, four delegates . He said a new record on spending four delegates. Money can help deliver a message, but if people do not like the message or do not agree with that, youre not going to be able to spend tons of money and buy an election, basically. But you have to also give donald trump credit. He knew how to get an enormous amount of earned media, not all of it was good, but there was an interesting study that was done on the value of the media, and the amount that trump had, the socalled earned media toward the other candidate. Elections show the candidate mattered more than the money, but the money has to still matter. You have to have enough money to meet is your threshold. Sally good. Does Public Financing of parties represent First Amendment issues, because the government is supporting these two specific viewpoints or whatever comes from the campaign . I do not think it raises a First Amendment issue. There are concerns about it, but presumably the way the money would be allocated would be based on some formula that has to do with the percentage of votes that party got in a prior election. We have Public Financing for the president ial election for many years until our friend, president obama not all of our friend blue that system by deciding to go out of it. There was no First Amendment issues about providing funds to the two major parties. So there are rules about access to political ballots for that is how formulas for Public Financing would work. There are difficulties in making a system like that work. I do not to overstate them, but First Amendment issues are not one of them. I think you are wrong about that. I think there are serious First Amendment problems of an a lot and somehow it is designed. The whole idea that two Political Parties and basically get the u. S. Government funds to subsidize their operations what about the parties that are trying to emerge . How do you write a rule for that . That is difficult to start with. But a more fundamental problem is how do you handle the enforcement process. People that like all this Campaign Finance regulation, i do not think anyone has a good answer for how to fairly enforce these laws. The least bad system that has been developed to the federal that . Election commission where no Political Party can control the enforcement process. And a lot of people do not think that works particularly well. But if you look at what happened in the irs, where there was clearly ideologically based decisions made about taxexempt obligations, how do you go and enforcement losses that cannot be captured by one party to tilt elections . Is not a matter of how much money the parties get. A much more effective way to undercut a party is to come out with a lastminute scandal or lastminute enforcement action saying one party cheated
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