Let's Find Common Ground - The State of Polarization: 2022. Christa Case Bryant and Story Hinckley

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

One year after the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol, we take a close look at America's political divide with two journalists who covered the calamitous events on that day and the responses to them.  Our guests are Christa Case Bryant, Congressional correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, and Story Hinckley, the Monitor's National political correspondent. We discuss whether America is more polarized than it was one year ago and the prospects for finding common ground in Congress and across the country. A Washington Post - University of Maryland opinion poll published on New Year's Day confirmed that Americans have totally different views of the 2020 election results. While large majorities of Democrats and independent voters say there was no evidence of widespread fraud, more than 60% of Republicans say there was. In their reporting throughout the year, both of our guests sought answers to complex questions about what caused people to storm the Capitol, and why Democrats and Republicans have opposing views about voter access and election laws. In this episode, we also examine the role of the media and individual reporters in covering the state of polarization in America today.

One year after the Mayhem and riot at the US Capitol, Americans are still deeply divided over what happened that day and how much former President Trump was to blame. We take a close look at America's political divide with two newspaper journalists who covered the calamitous events on that day and the varied reactions since then. and the varied reactions since then. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard Davies. And I'm Ashleigh Nell Tite. A new opinion poll published days ago by the Washington Post confirms that we still have very different views of the 2020 election results. While large majorities of Democrats and independents

say there was no evidence of widespread fraud, more than six in 10 Republicans say there was. We also look at whether polarization is a threat to democracy. Our guests are Christa Case Bryant, congressional correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and Story Hinkley, the monitor's national political correspondent. Our first question is to Krista. Is America more divided now than it

was a year ago? I would say we're definitely at least as polarized if not more so and I think part of that is because of not only what happened on January 6th but also how all of that has been portrayed by different actors. And if you look at all of the reasons that drove Trump supporters to come out that day to his rally down near the White House and then to come up to the Capitol, I mean, obviously a huge reason for that was distrust of the election results.

And then other reasons that brought people out that day, which are still persisting today are distrust of democratic institutions, including Congress, including the people administer elections at the local and state levels, distrust of the media, a feeling like nobody is listening to us, and the people who are listening to us keep getting marginalized from President Trump to people who have spoken out against COVID regulations or raised questions about scientific studies or done scientific studies themselves,

there's just this feeling that among conservatives, among Trump supporters, that we are not being heard and even just coming out to protest, even for all of us who were out there and didn't actually go into the capital or engage in any violence, we're all being labeled as domestic terrorists and not being given our First Amendment rights to protest. And on the left, there's a lot of concern as well about where we are as a country and why Republican lawmakers who were there and experienced those events that day have not taken a stronger stand against what happened. And that's created more tensions within Congress, which is where I work.

Story, would you add anything? Maybe I'll side with the idea that it's the same and it just feels more evident now. The Republican and Democratic Party and politicians disagree, for example, on how widely absentee ballots should be made available. And a lot of Americans hear certain framing about that issue either on the news that they choose to listen to, whether it's Fox or MSNBC and you know you can think, oh of course it makes sense how this pundit is explaining the issue. Making absentee ballots more available, do this or at the end verse making them less available means that. But I think that January 6 is so different because we can understand what happened that day or we feel

like we can understand what happened that day without a pundit filter. You know, we saw with our own eyes people wearing red maga hats, scaling the walls of the house chamber and we don't need wearing red MAGA hats, scaling the walls of the house chamber and we don't need Someone else to help us understand what that means So the left says we saw these people marching down the halls of Congress and chanting death threats to speak or Pelosi We heard that and then that's why I think it's at least as strong if not more so Particularly to people on the left Christa, I just wanted to say you were there. I mean this was your third day on your new beat as a congressional reporter, is that right? Or bureau chief?

Yeah. Wow. What was that like? January 6th was my third full day on the job. When everything built to a climax, I was inside the Senate chamber where journalists are not allowed to have access to electronic devices. I actually didn't know how bad things were getting outside until I stepped out to get it by a lunch and I was going to head over to the house side.

And then within a matter of a few minutes, my editor caught me up to speed on what had been happening and then the voice came over the PA systems saying the capital was on lockdown, someone ran through the press gallery, yelling, Pence has left, Pence has left. And then I knew it was serious if the Vice President had been escorted off the floor. And so most of the journalists who were in the press gallery were ushered back into the Senate chamber

and then eventually evacuated to a different part of the Capitol complex where we were held for about five hours. And that gave me a lot of time to reflect on what was happening that day and also how I had covered Trump supporters in the past few years. And what were you thinking? I think a big question for me was what the role of the media is in all of this. I mean, obviously there's a physical citadel of democracy that needs to be protected.

And that was what was very much in focus on January 6th. But I think there's also a figurative citadel of democracy, as Senator Rob Portman called it that night when we all came back into the capital. And I think journalists have a role in protecting that figurative citadel of democracy. And so as I was reflecting on how well have I done that over the past few years, was it wrong to try to present a more nuanced view of Trump supporters, the variety of people who supported him, the variety of reasons that drove them to support him. And I felt like, you know what, I did not adequately examine the strain of thinking that would lead people to storm the capital today.

I didn't really get into that. I was trying to counter extremist or simplistic views of who Trump supporters were, and in the process of doing that, I failed to alert people that there was a strain of thinking that was willing to engage in things like that. But I think since January 6th, in this first year covering Congress, I've also thought a lot about, you know, how do we talk about what happened that day? And are we veering the other direction and saying that everybody is dangerous and not looking at some of the nuances there?

So that's some of what I've been wrestling with. And I think a big challenge for me is, you know, should I have just ignored the recommendations of my editor and the people around me and just gone out to talk to people outside because one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't have the opportunity to come face to face with the people who were there and get a sense of what brought them out that day and get a sense of the size of the crowd. And, you know, obviously I've seen a sense of what brought them out that day and get a sense of the size of the crowd. And obviously I've seen a lot of videos and seen a lot of violence and things that were horrible and should have never happened.

And I believe those people should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the videos tend to focus in on the hot spots. And what I wanted to also understand is what was going on around those areas. I really commend my colleagues, especially photojournalists, who made the decision to capture what was happening, capture the news, you know, when they didn't know what the risks of that might be. And I know some of them got in some pretty dicey situations.

Story, you have reported on Trump supporters in various parts of the country. Have you also wrestled with the narrative of how the story of January 6 has been told? I think it's difficult to be in our shoes as reporters because I'm interviewing people who were there that day and believe that Donald Trump won the election and that it was unfairly taken from him. It's really difficult to not shut them down and just give us a list of facts that I've found through my non-biased just looking for the numbers and it gets to kind of a larger philosophical question of what our role is as journalists. Is it to educate the public or is it to accurately capture what a segment of America is thinking and feeling

and then bring that back out for the masses, which is what I tend to believe the purposes. We should also point out that after Donald Trump won in 2016, there was a very large number of Democratic voters and supporters who thought that election was stolen and that Trump had won unfairly and that he was an illegitimate president. Yeah, so, you know, I worry that we're entering this sphere where it's either our team wins or the election is illegitimate. I think so much of it stems from the fact that our country lives in such different bubbles. You know, for many of the people that I interview at Trump rallies, they live in rural areas that voted for Trump by 60, 70, 80 plus percent. Their friends and family are all diehard Republicans,

and they only watch Fox News, and then we have Democratic voters in urban areas where everyone they know voted for Biden, and they watch MSNBC. And when you read and listen to such different news and you interact every day with such different people, it seems as if we live on different planets. And the idea that your team could lose feels totally insane. Like I hear from Trump supporters all the time that say, I don't know one person who voted for Joe Biden and you want me to believe that he won the election.

That was the same going into the 2016 election with most of the mainstream media, right? Of course, Trump isn't gonna win. Most people are voting for Hillary Clinton. Right, exactly. Yeah, I think both sides are definitely in their different bubbles. And part of that is because of how polarized the media has become. Let's talk about why there's so much mistrust in elections, and especially the 2020 vote result. I mean, I think a lot of people genuine believe that it truly was stolen, literally stolen, and that whether that was through voting machines being manipulated or ballot stuffing or whatever, I think there are a lot of other reasons too that maybe don't fit as well next to

a hashtag so they don't get talked about as much. But for example, when I was doing some reporting leading up to the November 2020 election about mail-in voting, there were a lot of states that were rapidly scaling up their ability to do essentially universal mail-in voting. Anybody who wants to should be able to mail-in about it. And the states that already had that system in place like Washington or Oregon had something like a year and a half to two years of I recall to implement that after their legislatures voted to do it. But with the pandemic, the timeline was much more compressed. You know, it's a really big project to overall your election system so that mail

and balloting on that scale is possible. And I think there were concerns that in the rush to implement that, some things got overlooked. For example, how do you make sure that the voters on your voter rolls all still live in your state and are all still eligible to vote? I think there was a lot of concern around how

that build up to mail-in voting happened and whether it was in line with existing state laws and then also concerns about enforcement of other state laws that signatures need to match or that you need to present voter ID either when you pick up a ballot or when you register to get an absentee ballot that people were sort of like, oh, well, don't worry about that because it's a pandemic and we just want to make sure everybody can vote. So I think they often get overlooked. And maybe it's because Republicans themselves

are not making a big deal about them or not a big deal, maybe they feel like the real issue really is fraud, or maybe it's just harder to get people to focus on more complicated aspects like that. I'm going to be interested in how the conversation around election integrity goes forward and changes in ahead of the midterms or even in 2024 because there's an assumption that if turn out as high

Democrats win. And I think that that has been what has inspired a lot of Republican has inspired a lot of Republican legislators and politicians to be more on the side of caution and restricting greater access. But I think what we've seen more recently, specifically with the Virginia governor's race, is that the assumption that turnout equals Democratic wins isn't as true anymore? Yeah, because in Virginia, this past November, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the election for governor in a blue-leaning state, and he did it with high turnout. Right, and the Democrat, Terry McCalliff, the Democratic candidate, he hit his targets numbers-wise when the results were coming in. But young can ran up the tallies in southwest Virginia and red rural counties over there and just had turnout that surpassed

what Trump got even the year before. And I'm interested in Republicans for sure have seen this trend as well. And I'm interested how that is going to shape voter access going forward, because there's lower registration in a lot of Republican areas. Potentially, we're going to see in the future more Republican efforts to expand voter access. I think that could be a smart strategy for the Republican Party, given what we've seen recently. It's not the dichotomy of larger turnout benefits, Democrats, isn't going to be such a sure thing in the future.

Story hinkly and Christa case Bryant, you're listening to Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley. I'm Richard. Time now to tell you about Common Ground Committees YouTube channel. Yep, you can subscribe for free, and it's an easy way to help our non-profit succeed with just a single click. Subscribe to Common Ground Committee at youtube.com and gain access to all of our content, including past public events. You'll find videos with well-known political leaders and even music videos,

plus our 47 podcast episodes of Let's Find Common Ground. Now, more from our interview. Let's look at some other causes of polarization, such as how political candidates have chosen. Primary elections are one example. causes of polarization such as how political candidates have chosen. Primary elections are one example. Story? The way our system is set up right now, candidates in a primary have an incentive to go within a Republican primary as far right as possible. Candidates in a Democratic primary have an incentive to go as far

left as possible because the people who vote in primary elections are die-hard voters, either die-hard Republican voters or die-hard Democratic voters, and then once the candidate wins a primary by either being far left or far right, they can quickly try to tack to the middle for the general, but most of the time they don't have to because the way our political participation works right now is that they're trying to peel to the voters who turn out and those are often the most extreme voters. And Jerry Mandering, which is the way that the districts, political districts are drawn, plays a huge role in that because that determines what constituents a candidate is trying to appeal

to. Yeah, I think story is making a really good point that if you're in a solidly blue or solidly red area, the election is really decided in the primary, not in the general election, because most people who are Republicans will vote for the Republican candidate, no matter who it is, and most people who are Dems will vote for the Democratic candidate, no matter who it is. So the people who are deciding which candidate to send to the state house or send to Congress are the people who vote in the primary elections. And I think a lot of average voters think like, I'm not that into politics, you know, I'll just wait till

a general election and then I'll weigh in without realizing that that essentially gives them very little voice in what type of governance they're going to see in Congress. in what type of governance they're going to see in Congress. We just had a mention of gerrymandering. Congressional district maps are being drawn for this year. Could they make things even more partisan? So, I think what's happening this year with redistricting is so interesting because of the pandemic, and it was really just a crazy situation in the fact that in March

of 2020, we had the pandemic changing the way our entire world operates. At the same time that the U.S. government was trying to conclude a once-in-a-decade project where they try to count every single American in the country to determine how these districts should be drawn because every US house district has to have the same amount of people. So it was kind of just the biggest tangled nightmare that US census employees could dream of. And so because of that, there's been a huge delay in the data therefore a huge delay in the final maps. I mean the primaries are coming up. They start in March and April and May and for a lot of these states, we don't have US house maps for the primaries that are coming up in a few months. So if I want to run for my local office, I don't know exactly what that office is.

I don't know what district I'm going to be in and can run in. So that's really going to make primaries, I think, even more of an insular thing than they have them before because you don't have as much time. What about social media and tech algorithms? Are they a cause of polarization? When you look at what are the reasons that the people running in primaries and voting in primaries are more partisan, I do think big tech plays a part in that, social media plays a part in that, because to stories point earlier about how we're living in bubbles, I mean a lot of the infrastructure of those bubbles is on social media and the way that we know algorithms feed you, they try to feed you what they know you like to click on. And so that tends to reinforce the views that you

already have. Misinformation can be really destructive in a lot of ways, but at the same time, if a private company decides that they're going to become the arbiter of truth, that just raises a whole lot of questions about how do you do that and how do you know that you are proving the truth and or enforcing it on your platforms. There's a lot of pressure from Democrats and Republicans in different directions on Big Tech right now to either step up their enforcement against misinformation or to back off and let these be bigger forums for debate. And I think that's a really important question to be decided in the next five or 10 years. January 6th is one anniversary.

The other anniversary is it was right around the same time that the first people were lining up to get their vaccines. And in the past 12 months, vaccines have been a subject of intense polarization in many places. People who support Democrats are much more likely to be vaccinated than Republicans. What's going on with this aspect of polarization story? So I wish I had an answer for you,

but this is something that I really, I have a hard time understanding because I ask Republican voters who are anti-vaccine. I ask them about this. And a genuine quest to understand, because on the one hand, they say that former President Trump doesn't get enough credit for Operation Warp Speed

and his administration's efforts to create a vaccine than record breaking time and impressive feet. And why doesn't Trump get the credit for this? The media just doesn't want to give him the credit for this. But at the same time, they're refusing to take this vaccine themselves. Vaccine hesitancy may be hard to understand, but what about conservative views of vaccine mandates and restrictions on businesses. I understand why a lot of conservatives opposed the lockdowns in 2020.

I did a bunch of reporting on this and I covered a bunch of open Virginia rallies or open Michigan rallies. And it makes sense that a conservative would disagree with this idea on just an ideological level because they believe in individualism, capitalism, a free market society. And so the idea that a government could suddenly tell you as a small business owner that you're

not allowed to open your own small business and you can't do X, Y, and Z on your own private property and then have these rules have such dire economic consequences, it just makes sense to me how that would disagree with their conservative principles. But I don't understand why vaccines have been roped into this broader partisanship of that the lockdowns had, because the vaccine seemed like a vessel out of that situation.

Krista? You know, in order to consider the validity of a mandate and whether it's really a trade off between individual liberties and the public good. And if vaccines are for the public good, I think, you know, it would be logical that you need to make the argument about to what extent are they protecting the public good. And I think that there are a number of studies that conservatives have gravitated toward and highlighted that call into question whether vaccines are more effective at just helping the individual who takes them,

or is it really preventing that individual from spreading the virus to other people? One issue is that public health officials in their desire to end the pandemic have felt that getting everybody vaccinated as quickly as possible is like our number one best way to get there. I talked with one constituent who had lobbied his senator to get rid of the mandates. And he said, you know, all the flip-flopping and the lack of transparency on the point, on the part of people like Dr. Fauci, had really made him just trust anything that public health officials were saying, including the idea that the vaccine is safe and effective.

I think that's another thing. There's been concerns about side effects of the vaccine. And that's just dismissed as like conspiracy thinking. And then maybe another reason is that Republicans tend to live in more rural areas. And so they're not seeing as many people as if you live in an urban area and you're taking a public bus all the time.

I think a lot of it has to do with just feeling like public health officials aren't being as honest and transparent. And so there's now a lack of trust. And I think that'll take a while to remedy. I think the public health officials in handling of the pandemic they haven't left a lot of room, a lot of daylight for nuance.

And I can understand why not. They're there have an objective to maybe get a majority of Americans vaccinated. They just decide that it's easier to stick with one message. And I think what a lot of conservative voters and politicians and people would like is maybe a little bit more humility from these leaders. You know, I remember early on in the pandemic when I was in Washington in DC, I was required to run outside with a mask on, which we now know you don't need to do, but I just think that what a lot of people would like is a little bit more humility and we did we did think that we needed this at first we were wrong we don't we're also trying to learn

public health officials tend to speak in a rather academic way it's a way that not everybody not every list is going to relate to. I don't think it's just about being academic though i feel like it's not being willing to say what we don't know or to say that we were wrong. What gives you hope that perhaps we can find more common ground, not agree, but find common ground to help reduce polarization? So one thing that gives me hope is that we as individual citizens have a role in curbing polarization.

If we want to, you know, everything from how broadly do we search the news for different viewpoints, for viewpoints that are unlike ours? Are we looking to the news just to validate our own viewpoints or to test them and see are there any holes in our arguments? Could we learn something more that would enable us to strengthen our viewpoints and make them more robust? Are we willing to be challenged about our own views and sort of find that invigorating? Or do we find it infuriating? And how can we try to have more conversation, more interactions in our individual lives that brought in our viewpoints and I think there are a lot of choices that each individual member of a country can make every single day that can affect the level of polarization in the country. the idea that it really starts with each one of us, to me, is really empowering because then it's not waiting for some huge institution to change or for a culture to change.

It's about what we're doing and thinking each day. And I would say that I think it's really encouraging that people are participating in this democracy. I mean, if you're voting, that means that you care. And 2020, we had the largest increase in voters between two presidential elections. So we had 17 million more people vote in 2020 than we did in 2016. And the Virginia governor's race in November, it was an all-time record turnout. So people are voting, which I think is really encouraging. And I think that Americans of all political stripes should be encouraged by that idea,

because I think that that's a signal of a healthy democracy. And also the fact that a lot of people are getting involved in politics in a way that they haven't before. We've seen school board elections become a hot topic of debate across the country and inspire a lot of nasty rhetoric, but at the same time, we have people in a lot of school districts are seeing a record number of candidates. So people are running for these positions

which they previously hadn't paid any attention to. Same with secretaries of state. Granted, they've been in the news for not so great reasons, but people are paying attention to this administrative role that they probably hadn't been in the past. So I'm really encouraged when we see people running for positions, lower level, local positions, administrative positions, and then when we see high voter turnout, both of which we have seen recently. Thank you.

Thank you both for coming on Let's Find Common Ground again. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Story Hinckley and Christopher Case Bryant of the Christian Science Monitor on Let's Find Common Ground. Our podcasts are produced for Common Ground. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.