TRIGGERnometry - Will Trump Win Again? - Matthew Goodwin

Episode Date: September 20, 2020

Matthew Goodwin returns for a third time. Check out his most recent title: National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you. If you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant and returning guest today is a professor of politics at the University of Kent and the author of National Populism, A Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. Matt Goodwin, welcome back to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me. I did that all from memory. You must be impressed. It's great. You're really not impressed. Second time. It's your second time as saying it. Third time.

Third time, believe it or not. It's good to have you back, Matt. It's great to be here. I watch every episode. I do. I'm such a big fan. I've sent some episodes to my mother as well. That's how impressive I think the show is.

Well, that's very kind. And actually, if someone of your caliber and stature watches our show, I think that's a positive. I would urge everybody to watch trigonometry. Well, they already are, mate. So anyway, it's good to have you back. The last time we had you on, it was one of, I think, one of our best episodes that we've ever done. It was in the wake of the 11th. election in 2019 and December 20. No pressure, by the way. I think it was two days after the election.

It was literally two days. I don't think I'd slept, actually. I think it was just straight from crunching the election to your studio. Really? Or how things haven't changed. You're just saying you haven't slept very much. I haven't, no. No. But you're working hard and we'll get into some of the work that you're doing. But at that time, we were talking about the collapse of the Labour Party, the problems on the left. Now, we've got another fairly important. election coming up in November in the United States. And that's why we're so delighted to have you back, because I think they always say this is the most important election in where it kind of is, isn't it? It's a highly consequential election for lots of different reasons. I think on the one hand,

it's a referendum on Trump, the guy that, of course, we all thought wouldn't win. But it's also going to tell us ultimately whether liberalism, mainstream politics, has a reply. to populism, and that essentially is what November is about. But you say sort of self-deprecatingly something we all said wouldn't happen. You actually tried to get people to recognize that Trump wouldn't be elected in 2016. Well, I wrote a piece explaining why I thought Trump would win. And, I mean, it's an interesting story, I suppose. I used to write quite regularly for the New York Times, and mainly on stuff about Europe.

And then during the summer of 2016, thought that people were obsessively. about the national polls, and they were losing sight of the state-level polls, and they were losing sight of the groups that were more likely than others to turn out, in my opinion. And fast forward to the election, that's kind of what happened. Anyway, I sent that piece to the New York Times, so why I thought Trump would win. It wasn't published, because at that point, we were dealing with, you know, 99% implied chance of a Trump victory, sent it to Politico, who did publish it. And I think at that point it was very much about trying to learn from the experiences of Britain and learn about what was the message of the referendum.

That actually there are some fundamental problems with the way that we poll certain groups and there are some issues with how we interpret people's enthusiasm in elections. And that played out obviously to Trump's benefit. So I think 2016 was the big shock. And since then, I know we're going to talk about it, But since then, obviously, we've learned a great deal, too, not only about Trumpism, but also about how you respond to somebody like Trump.

And we're seeing Trump now. He seems to be on the back foot, doesn't he, in terms of the polls as a result of COVID? Was it very much the case that if COVID had never happened, he would have absolutely stormed the election? Would it have been a bit more complicated? I think Trump would have won without COVID. I think it would have been fairly comfortable.

The reason I say that, firstly, is if you look at the polling, on the economy he had a significant lead, even at the beginning of this year. He also, we tend to forget this now, he also has a fairly clear record and list of things that he can point to for his supporters, you know, standing up to China, building part of the wall, tax breaks, judges, all of that kind of stuff that Republicans want to see. He has delivered for some of his key groups of voters. But I think also at the same time, the Democrats have focused overwhelmingly on the anti-Trump message and haven't yet, at least in my view, articulated the pro-democrat message. And I think that's symbolic of a deeper problem within our politics, particularly in the West,

which is that liberalism has not really renewed itself in an instrumental positive way. It's very good at saying why its opponents are evil, race, ignorant, et cetera, it still has not renewed its core message to voters, i.e., why is it relevant today? What does it want to achieve? What's its vision for society? I mean, if you told me, or asked me today, what's Biden's vision for the United States? Apart from it, not involving Donald Trump, I don't really know. Maybe there's a bit of stuff around clean energy, a bit of stuff about making it easier to join unions, a bit of stuff about taxing high earners.

What's the vision, right? And I think that speaks to a deeper problem facing not only social democracy, but facing liberals in general. Well, we had Scott Adams on the show, and he, in fact, said that he's never met a Biden fan. And if you've never met a Biden fan, there's plenty of Trump fans,

how is he possibly going to get elected? Well, he'll get elected, if he does get elected, through increased turnout among the key groups, university graduates, African Americans, suburban voters, women. And, you know, compared to Clinton at this point in 2016, Biden is in a stronger position. He is doing better in the polls nationally. He's doing better in some swing states than Clinton was doing. But I still think Trump has has got a very good chance at the election. If you drill down into some of those states,

Florida, for example, Trump is competitive. I think Biden's having some real problems with Hispanic, Latino voters in some specific counties. And I think the job numbers do matter. I don't agree with the narrative that it's all culture and economics doesn't have anything to say. I think as long as Trump is able to say, there's another one and a half million going back to work this month. The markets are beginning to stabilize, albeit having a bit of a wobble recently. He's going to be able to have that sort of let's not ruin it narrative. And of course, then there's law and order and there's this issue of safety and basic security, which I think ultimately will play to Trump's advantage. And the other thing, perhaps it's deeper than all

of that, is the sort of way in which liberalism has become. detached from what it was supposed to be, and it's morphed into this sort of hyper-liberalism that is quite disparaging of the national community, and it seeks to repudiate many of the symbols and the myths and the identities that come with that national community, whether that's expressed in terms of questioning the underlying foundations of that country, or tearing down important symbols for particular people in particular states, or or rewriting the narratives of history, most people still primarily identify with their country,

and most people derive their sense of self-esteem from that national identity. So the more and more we see that being pulled apart and questioned, and the more we're saying to citizens, you should feel bad for being born into this country and coming from this country, the more and more you will stoke a backlash against that. And of course, Trump benefited from that partly in 2016,

But if anything, the volume of that, I think, has increased significantly since then. Well, I'm an immigrant, so I'm better than you, me. But you mentioned the polls quite a lot there, which I think is interesting to talk about, because I've been watching you on Twitter talking about the polls. I mean, it's a big part of what you do, commenting on the different information that's coming in, on the data. Tell us more about that in terms of how people perceive Trump in the sense that, you know, the economy was – So, I mean, you can argue about it, but the economy certainly was doing well

by the conventional ways of measuring it. Growth, unemployment, all of that stuff was doing well. Then COVID hits. Has the COVID been factored in in the sense of people going, yeah, I mean, look, no one was going to maintain unemployment at the record level, low levels that it was with COVID? Or are people going, it's all Trump's fault, you know, he's responsible, the economy is going to be screwed because of him, et cetera.

Like, how is that broken, for him. So Trump has lost ground in terms of how people perceive his handling of coronavirus. He's become weaker on those indicators. He's now level with Biden on the economy. In a couple of polls, he's been trailing by. But the point is that when you ask that question, who do you think would better manage the economy? Only around 35, 36 percent of people are picking Trump or Biden. So there's not an overwhelming enthusiasm for either candidate. The other thing that's changed, which might be significant is that the large majority of Americans now say America is heading in the wrong direction and that they think that they and their families are worse off than they were four years ago.

And so I think around the polls, what you're seeing is a general mood of disillusionment and despondency among Americans. Now, of course, that can be interpreted in different ways. That's not to say it's all anti-Trump. I think there's just a sense of despair about what is happening to, their country. And I think they look around at the protests and the police officers being shot and the harassment and the polarization and just clearly they can see their country. Well, and there's a pandemic too. In the right direction and the pandemic. Yeah, true. So I think Trump's position in many ways has weakened, but I would still argue that the Democrats and Biden have yet to cut through in terms of the

positive message. Now, Obama did that. Obama cut through overwhelmingly. But to me, the Biden campaign has quite a few similarities with the Romaine campaign in the UK and many similar campaigns in Europe, in that it's overwhelmingly focused on the negative aspects of its opponents rather than setting out that positive vision of a sort of Biden, Biden America. And that's where you can see on the polling questions around how do you feel about Biden. A lot of voters are still not enthusiastic about Biden, including Democrats. he's not inspiring the same kind of grassroots mobilization that, say, Obama was able to do. And on many of the enthusiasm questions, Trump still has quite an advantage.

You know, I think unlike 2016, this election is probably seen as being more existential, right? If you're a Republican, you know, this election is about saving your country from the anarchic, chaotic, radical layer. If you are a Democrat, this election is about saving the country from Trumpism and the radical far right. And so the stakes have gone up for both sides. And that means that whoever wins, the other side is going to feel as though in some ways they're losing their country. And that's why I think America is in such a dangerous position. This is an issue that's been a concern for, I think, everybody. And we'll get into what happens if this happens, what happens if that happens with Trump.

But the thing that you said there seems to me quite interesting. On the one hand, you say Trump still has a good chance. On the other hand, you say that he's par with Biden on the economy. Now, I'm not the smartest person in the room. Could you please repeat that? It's because Matt is here. I'm just saying for him, plus Anton. But what I'm hearing there is the social stuff is where you are seeing,

people really feeling like Trump is maybe protecting them from something or not on side with people who are coming, you know, you said it's existential. Is that going to be the driver here, do you think? I think there are probably a lot of voters who might not be expressing their view that might be expressing what we'd call a social desirability bias that Trump is so toxic that perhaps they feel that they can't really confess to voting for him after the shit show of the last four years. But also, I think at the same time, there's a lot that can change between now and early November. The job numbers can change. The economy can begin to improve. The cases could start to go down. Trump could point to weaknesses within Biden. We have the debates to come. We have a lot

of things that could play a significant role. And it's not a popular point. Trump's a good campaigner. Trump is good at the grassroots. Now, whether the COVID virus and the the lack of rallies and the difficulty with organizing that on the ground, you know, will that hurt Trump possibly? You know, not forecasting and saying categorically Trump is going to win the election. But if anything, I think over the last few weeks we've seen things beginning to move in Trump's direction in some of the polling. And I wouldn't at all be surprised if that carries on.

Biden has been very quiet. and he's not really showing himself to be the charismatic unifier that we expected. Final question from me on just that line of questioning, Matt. If you were advising the Biden campaign right now, what would you tell him to do? The same thing I'd tell Kirstama to do, which is start to explain why you love the country. What do you love about America? Stop telling people what you want to tear down and what you want to change about the country. What do you love about the country?

and why do you want to come from that country? What do you identify with? And this is the same problem that runs through center left politics today in that it's become so detached from ordinary average public opinion. So at times

self-absorbed and neglectful of how ordinary people think and feel that it can no longer articulate why it is it wants to be in that country It's constantly talking about what's wrong with that country. It's constantly repudiating institutions, traditions, myths, symbols, and voters have picked up on that. And as a researcher, there's not an easy way that we can survey that. And I can say to you categorically, this is what makes a difference.

But if you look at the comprehensive defeat of Jeremy Corbyn less than a year ago, and if you look at Trump's win in 2016, and you look at the rise of populism, And you look at the collapse of social democracy across much of Europe. For me, at least, and I'm happy for people to disagree with me, I think what runs through all of those moments is a clear sense among voters that they are sick of politicians telling them what is wrong with their country. And they are proud to be from that country, and they like being from that country, and they derive their sense of esteem and identity from that country.

And that's quite different from overt ethnic nationalism. And so I think the left and in some ways moderate sense, centrist liberals too, sometimes miss a trick on that. And, you know, it's the old debate that we've had on the show many a time. But I would tell Biden, go out there and tell people what you love about America. In the same way that I say to Kirstama, go out there and say to people, why'd you love putting? Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world. So let me tell you about something that's actually right.

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Triggernometry fans six months completely free. All you've got to do is head over there, get the six month subscription and use our special code, which is, of course, trigger. Go to babble.com.com.uk-U-K slash play and use the promo code trigger on your six-month subscription. That's B-A-B-B-B-B-E-L.com.uk forward slash play and use the code trigger. And we're not going to explain how to spell the word trigger, because that would be patronising. It seems that we've talked a lot about Biden. We haven't really addressed the elephant in the room, which is he doesn't appear to be in the best possible shape.

Sometimes when he's speaking, he's stumbling over words. His campaign seems to be unclear. Do you think that will have an impact in that people see him and think to themselves he's not physically well enough to be present? Because there is a narrative being perpetuated about him. I think it would matter more if he was facing someone who was clearly, mentally balanced and competent. And I think because he's facing Trump in a way,

that's sort of neutralised. But we also know through things that we've experienced in this country, take Jeremy Corbyn as an example. I think there was an awareness among lots of voters in 2017. Corbyn was not in the prime time of his life. He was not the most energetic and sort of passionate, etc. And yet he still did fairly well. But nobody thought he had dementia, Matt.

Nobody thought he had to measure it short, but I don't, I'm not convinced that is as bigger factor as it may be. Now, of course, we might get to the debates and you guys might sort of sit here and perhaps one of your live shows during the debates and Biden might fall apart. We don't know. But I think he can probably hold it together. In fact, if anything, our expectations of Biden now might be so low that he may end up leaving us pleasantly surprised. Really? And how big an influence do you think those debates are going to be? Because at the moment, it seems as if, well, as you said, Trump is behind. But Trump seems to thrive in that particular environment. Yeah. I think political scientists might argue that debates and the effects of debates are overblown in the media. But there's something about this year where I think we can all sort of sense that the stakes are high and maybe this year this is going to matter more than usual. You know, we've seen so little a Biden. during the campaign. We know that Trump, if he's up against the wall, we know that he's going to come out swinging. That's what Trump does. We know that's what he did with Clinton. We know he was

aggressive and combative. We know that all of the optics that went into those debates, you know, the women that were associated with Bill Clinton, etc. All of that stuff was designed to kind of undermine and psychologically unnerve his opponent. So I think there'll be lots of more tricks in the bag that are going to come out from the Trump campaign as we go into those debates. And we can already, I think, guess what those are going to be with regards to Biden. But again, it comes down to, will Biden himself be able to not get sucked into that, keep distance and present to America what his unifying, positive instrumental message really is? And of course, the one thing I would say is, unlike Obama, what did Obama do quite well? He said it's not the red states of America, not the blue states

the United States of America. I think we've come so far down the kind of hyper-liberal road now. We've come so far down the identity politics road now. It's impossible for Biden to say that now, that we are very quickly defining politics by group identities and by racialized group identities. And it's almost as if that brief moment for the Democrats, that brief window of opportunity to unify people around something that brings them together rather than things that separate them, like their racial identity, we've kind of gone past that now. So I've been rereading Michael Lind, the American writer, who I recommend to everybody.

Michael Lynn's book, The Next American Nation in 1995, is one of the most influential books. I think, at least for me, is very insightful on US politics. And Michael's argument in that is, in essence, you've gone through two stages in the post-war period. You've had the foot, in terms of civil rights, you've had the first stage where essentially civil rights campaigners were focused on colorblind advancement, bringing different groups together to make America a more equal, fair, tolerant country.

And then really from the 70s onwards, you have a second approach that kicks in that is principally about asymmetric multiculturalism, affirmative action, you know, race-based policy, and that is implicitly encouraging people to think about themselves, not as Americans per se, but as belonging to particular groups. And the moment that you then start to move down that spiral, move down that road, so you can't really get people to focus anymore

on what's cutting across those group boundaries. So it becomes harder and harder to mobilize that broad church, that big tent politics. And I think that's roughly where we are now. And of course, I know you've had other people on the show that make this point too, but if you look, for example, at some of the work in the US, we now know that that is really increasing the likelihood that white Americans are now thinking of themselves as white Americans rather than Americans,

and that all of this is simply increasing the salience of people's racial and ethnic identity. And this is a worrying place, I think, to be in an advanced society where people are being encouraged to think of themselves in that way. So Biden, I don't think we'll be able to get back to that cross-group message. There's a question that I wanted to ask because it's somebody, there's a figure on the Democrats side who had an appeal, and in my opinion it had a cut through. Maybe I'm wrong and could appeal to the Donald Trump supporter,

which is Bernie Sanders. Do you think if we had that type of figure, a Bernie Sanders S figure, he would be a more unifying influence, As you were talking, mate, I had my money. You were going to say Tulsi Gabbard. I would have quite liked to have seen Bernie Sanders versus Trump in 2016. I don't think it would have been necessarily the recipe for healthy, moderate, balanced politics. But just as an experiment to see who really would have won that contest.

I think my view would be that Trump would win that. And I think the simple reason is that, again, for radicals, socialists for centre-left social democrats, the problem they all face actually is they're being attacked on two flanks whereas they are only speaking on one flank. So you've got economic security

and cultural security. And cultural securities become more important in recent years for all of the reasons that we know. Immigration, terrorism, transnational organisations, rapid social and ethnic change. But centre-left

politicians, radical left socialists are kind of stuck in this mindset, that this is all about economic scarcity and economic competition. And so all of this stuff is just racism. So we're not really going to engage with it, and we're going to shut it down. And we're just going to say this is really just about resources and how we distribute resources. And as a consequence, they've been outflanked from one country to another constantly, because at the same time, many of the populace from Trump to Farage to Le Pen also changed, and that they were saying, well, we've always talked about the cultural stuff, but now let's get a bit more protectionist on the economy too. Let's start saying, well, hang on,

why are all of these big multinationals dodging their taxes? Or for Trump, let's turn up the volume on anti-China and reshoring and bringing back businesses to the US. So, you know, both of those moves, I think really left populace in a much more competitive position because then they're attacking the left on the economic dimension, but they're also constantly berating the left on the cultural dimension too. And that is where we still are, in essence, and that is still the riddle that Kyrgyz Stama and Biden and every other centre-left social democrat needs to answer.

And you can say, well, let's take the Danish road and maybe we'll turn up the volume on immigration control and try and meet these parties halfway, or you could go the complete opposite direction and say, no, that constituency is done. We're going to remain firmly socially liberal, and we're going to remain economically interventionist, and we're going to appeal to this new coalition

of university graduates and minorities, which is probably where many within the Labour Party, I think, still are. But one way or the other, if they don't solve that riddle, they're not going to get back into power. You talk about solving the riddle for the same, to left parties. I mean, one of the things that I think, whether you're a Trump fan, and we have some Trump fans who watch a show,

or Biden's, not Biden fan, as we established, not many of those, but certainly a Democratic supporter. We have many of them watching the show as well. The one thing they can all agree on is that the two candidates that the main parties have ended up with, let's just say, are suboptimal, to put it very mildly, right? How do the Democrats in particular, because, you know, Trump won,

so you can see why people would be with, him from then. He is the president. He's, as you say, delivered on some of the things that he promised. But how do the Democrats who are targeting that progressive coalition that you talk about end up with a very old, very white man leading that? Why haven't they got someone better? I think there is a supply side problem. Well, I think they had they experimented with, you know, various candidates during the primaries. It didn't work out. And I think that, think what they've gone back to is the safe territory. It's the, it's Obama revivalism, right? Biden is very different from Obama in many ways. He's more radical economically than Obama was.

But they've gone back to what they think they know, right, which is let's go back to the regime that won before we had Trump. And this is what I mean about the retrospective liberalism, that you see it all over the place, you see it in the kind of, complaining of mainstream newspaper columnists. Can't we just go back to the days of Blair in the third way? And you see it in the positioning of political parties from Labor to the Democrats. There's still this reluctance to accept that the rules of the game have changed and the foundations of politics have changed. And the constituencies and the electorates that used to support those types of projects have changed. They've moved. And the dam has been.

broken. And if you just take the UK as an example, the reason the Red Wall collapsed, similar to the reason the Rust Belt states went to Trump, is because we now have millions of voters who are cross-pressured, who are leaning left on the economy, but leaning right on culture. And I've just finished a study for the Joseph Rantry Foundation. And we talked about this when we last met after the election. We've just gone back and run the numbers. And what you see in the UK, for example, So all of the people that Labor should have held onto in many of those Red Wall seats, the one thing they noticed was Labor shifting to the pro-second referendum position. But they noticed that.

They saw that, and that was the cue for them to say, okay, this party's not interested in where I am on this cultural question anymore. I'm off. And I think in the same way, Biden needs to be very careful because the cues that he's sending to some of the voters, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and so on, They have to be positive ones. They have to be, okay, right, I'm going to bring back jobs. I'm going to bring back manufacturing.

I'm going to be tough on China. I mean, Biden is almost as tough on China as Trump is. If you look at his policy platform, I'm going to focus on not just your economic interest, but accept that actually the pace of change in America is too great. And we need to perhaps, as we did in the early 20th century, slow down for a decade or so and then think about getting back to that change in the future. But until they can do that, they're not going to get back in the game.

How can he possibly do that? If he was to start articulating that cultural position, he would be strung up by his balls by the far left of his own party. So I think there are different ways of doing it, right? So take, what do we mean by this cultural dimension, right? We mean voters that hold socially conservative values who prioritize order, stability, tradition, family. They're anxious about crime.

They value conformity. They don't like what they see as relentless churn and change. Those social conservative voters. And we see them in questions like, do you think we should bring back capital punishment? Do you think that we should teach children greater discipline? Do you think that social change is moving too quickly? All of those kinds of things, right?

there are different ways of tapping into that. So, for example, what did Blair do quite well? I mean, I appreciate Blair as a somewhat controversial figure on the left. The one thing Blair did very well is he said, let's get tough on crime, but tough on the causes of crime. And that was before we have the era of large-scale migration. So, of course, he could get away with a bit more than perhaps he could today, where those issues had become more important.

But that was tapping into the cultural dimension in the same way that, say, a labourer, leader or a Democrat today saying, I think we should have a pause on large-scale migration for five years so that we can help American workers or British workers or whatever. And that's what I mean by tapping into that dimension. And you can do it in other ways. You can be national pride in expressing belief in the country. And even when Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were talking about their strategy around

build it in Britain, you know, some of those campaign messages, I think might have actually tapped into some of the concerns in redwall seats because voters might have interpreted that as being actually they're quite interested in in in in sort of respecting the country. And that still I think is why Corbyn did reasonably well in 2017 because he came up with that position that said on the one hand I respect where you are on Brexit and we're going to we're going to do it. But on the other hand I accept that you feel the system is rigged. And it's in a way Corbyn should have held onto that position and not being pushed off of it. Do you enjoy watching problematic content online that you don't want your friends or family to know about?

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Keep your browsing history to yourself. Visit ExpressVPN.com forward slash trigger today. To get three months free subscription, visit ExpressVPN.com slash trigger. That's EXPR, E-S-V-N-com slash trigger today. Good job spelling it out for them, it doesn't sound patronising at all. Absolutely. Oh, and by the way, all those little words you use, I've got no idea what they mean.

Absolutely. Now, we've touched it already in this interview, but it's something that I really wanted to explore with you, and I think a lot of people are very worried about this. I don't think any one of those two parties are going to accept the fact that they lost in good grace. And doesn't that leave democracy in a very dangerous position? So I would say the one thing I think we all want to see

is a clear outcome. Yeah. Yeah, the nightmare is the sort of 2000 rerun where you have an election that just is not resolved for, you know, 30 or days and everybody's standing in limbo while we count the postal votes and some of the states are contested or somebody wins a popular vote by a mile, but another candidate wins the electoral college. Just for the sake of electoral integrity and as, you know, a friend of America, you know, I think we here, I think we would want to see a kind of clear outcome. But there is an interesting question. I think much of the debate now is focused on what is going to happen if Trump loses. I think the equally interesting question is what is going to happen if Biden loses because both sides are so invested in this election outcome. You know, and the idea that just one side is delegitimizing this election is nonsense. I mean, it's going on on both sides. Both sides. Campaigners, commentators, politicians are in a race to the bottom already to try and delegitimize this election. So we might as well just call it what it is. But, for Democrats who I think have been, you know, obviously have become more convinced in their belief around the scale of discrimination in American society, the threat of Trumpism, the belief that the foundations and the institutions of American democracy are now at risk.

You know, what is going to happen to that sentiment if Trump wins again? Because it's, I think it would be such a devastating blow. because it will remind everybody, firstly, that they don't have the answers. Secondly, that liberalism doesn't have the answer to populism. They need to go back to the drawing board and start all over again. Everything that's happened over the last four years has not made a difference. And in my mind, I go back to the five stages of grief, the five stages of loss. it came out in the 1969,

where Elizabeth Coober-Ross talked about, you start with denial, which I think we've gone through over the last four years, you go to anger, which I think we've seen, which is a sort of dismissal and the derision that's thrown

at anybody who holds a view that is not consistent with the liberal consensus. And then you get to bargaining, and you have to bargain with the other side and you have to try and reach this new settlement. You have to try and give them something to try and bargain it out before you can think about getting close to the end state of acceptance.

And I don't think we've come out of denial or anger yet. I think we're still in that phase. And if you look at the books that are coming out, the end of democracy, the collapse of American society, the sort of continual turning in of commentary. It's become much more insular in America over the last four years. In an already insular country, it's become obsessed with deconstructing the foundations of the country. And I think all of that points to this denial and anger and inability to articulate a response.

And if Trump wins again, it's difficult to see how all of that doesn't just go into steroids. You just have this outpouring of disbelief and frustration and anger and despair. I think it's safe to say that Trump probably wouldn't manage that with dignity. He made this point when we had him on the show, didn't he? Yeah, he did indeed. There's one final question that I want to ask you on that. Do you think what we're starting to see is the breakup of the Union? Just this incredible polarisation between red and blue.

You have states which are blue, which will all. always be blue, states are always be red, and the fact that we just can't seem to talk to each other anymore? I don't know, it's a short answer. I think the problem that America has post-Cold War, maybe China will fill the void, is that it doesn't have the existential, external threat that combined Americans together. So what we've seen since the end of the Cold War, are, I think at least, Americans turning in on themselves because they don't have the grand narratives that perhaps they once had

to try and provide that unity and coherence. So as a consequence, you know, I think they've become much more insular, much more engaged in themselves, rather than perhaps trying to promote unity against Russia or, you know, whoever else. And that's a real problem for them. I'm not going to say who it is, but I had a similar conversation with a very prominent US academic not long ago and asked him the same question.

Do you think living in America, observing everything you're observing, do you think that America will hold itself together? And he said, I'm not sure. I'm not sure where we'll be, you know, 30, 40 years from now. And of course, there have been prophecies that the United States will fall apart. Samuel Huntington, for example, was one who not so long ago argued that in an era of rapid change, that southern states would essentially leave the union, not because they would voluntarily opt out, but because essentially they would be taken over.

And so far, we've discovered that Huntington was not correct in that prediction. But one of his main concerns at the same time was that America would fall into the hands of what he called a denationalized elite that didn't identify with the country and that was more interested in de-nationalized. reconstructing American history. And he worried as well that that would have pretty disastrous effects on the cohesion of American society.

I think what's interesting too is if you look at writers on the left and the right, think about some of the most influential books over the last, say, 20 years, Robert Putnam Bowling Alone, Charles Murray coming apart, Huntington's Who Are We? those books, John Codling of the American Mind, all of those books in a way have been sort of saying the same thing, which is internally the social fabric as being stretched over time. Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair is another, and that if you are white middle-aged working class,

life generally is getting worse for you, and if you're from the coast, university-educated, middle-class elite, you're gradually drifting away, not just economically, but socially and culturally. So we know these things are happening. But nobody is yet has got an answer to that. I think what we're seeing in the UK, we're on the same road, but we're a few miles behind. We can see many of the same things actually happening in the UK, not as pronounced. We don't have the opioid crisis.

We don't have the healthcare system. But we do have growing levels of disconnect between these different groups socially and culturally. so we should watch America, watch what happens in America, extremely closely. Well, we wish them well because it doesn't sound like a healthy recipe, which is one of the reasons we spent so much time talking about it on the show for so long, because what happens in America doesn't stay in America, as we know. And it is troubling. And, you know, Francis' previous and very good question about the repercussions of the different outcomes

when we had James Lindsay on the show. Right. This is one of the things that he talked about. I think it was the time we had him. one with Peter Bogosian, that a re-election of Donald Trump will not wake anybody who opposes him up to the fact that they may be heading down the wrong path. You will be seen as vindication of their position, which is, yes, America is a white nationalist country. Here's more evidence of that. We need to push harder. We need to fight more against these evil people on the far right.

So you addressed what happens if Trump wins. What happens if Trump loses? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a legitimate reason to feel concerned about the conclusion those voters will reach if they feel as though their voice is now out of the political system. And I think what worries me about America is that existential sense of loss that the election is no longer framed about transactional policy. I mean, if you go back and you, even if you look at the Trump ads have gone out over the last two weeks, the Trump ads are not about, you know, let's increase taxes on let's change policy XYZ. They're about save your country. I think in a way what we're getting back to, Michael Oakshot talked about this a little bit, the political theorists, that on the one hand, you have the politics of pragmatism, which is about technocracy, which is about the dry managerial. of running a state and keeping a country ticking over. And on the other hand, you have the politics of salvation and national renewal and redemption. And in all democracy's politics is a sort of balance between those two.

So if you think, for example, about Remain and Leave in Britain, Remain was overly technocratic, dry, managerial, and it lost voters. And Leave was redemptive. It was about saving your country, taking back control. and they existed in this awkward balance. And then when the populists go a little bit too far, the technocrats come back in the room and say, well, hang on a second.

You want to rip up an international treaty? Well, let's have a conversation about that. I don't think you know. And I think in the same way with America, what you can see clearly in this election is this sort of sense of, on both sides, their candidates being ultimately about national salvation. So it's not about transactional policy anymore.

It's a sense that if Biden doesn't win, I've lost my country to these right-wing reactionaries. Whereas if Trump doesn't win, particularly for the more militant white nationalists, the militia groups and those kinds of people who clearly feel that something is fundamentally wrong with their country for whatever reason, of course I think they're going to conclude

that their country has been taken away from them, etc. And I think that's where we're in a very dangerous place, this idea of cumulative extremism, which you can see in some of the coverage around Portland that one side is fending off against another, the moderate centre is given way, and you've got this sort of low-level tip-for-tat violence that just sort of becomes normalized over time.

You know, the number of occasions over the last couple of months I've gone on and somebody's been shot in America, somebody's been killed, and just sort of feel like, this is kind of just normal. You know, but this sort of legitimation of tip-for-tat violence and how it just gradually seems to increase. I think that's where I get concerned about America because I used to live in America.

I used to live in Michigan. And it didn't feel like that when I was there. It felt a little bit more cohesive. And there has been lots of people, mainly on the left, mainly on my Facebook feed, who have been saying things that there's a danger that Trump won't cede the presidency. That's nonsense.

I mean, who knows what Trump would do? I don't know. Thank you, Matt. No, I don't know. I don't know. But I think I would be amazing if you did that. I think probably we know what he'll do. Look at it like a money-making opportunity to rebuild brand Trump and go and do whatever.

He wants to do in the business world and critique his successor from the sidelines. I think the interesting question about Trump losing is what happens to the Republicans. Because the Republicans then have essentially two choices, which is double down on Trumpism, which I don't think they'll do. I think they'll conclude like they did after Bush that they need a revamp, they need to move back to the centre. And then you've got this interesting choice between sort of doing that through a kind of neoliberal sort of center right. You know, let's go back to the liberal consensus, business friendly. You know, let's stop talking about migration.

Let's just be, you know, good old-fashioned conservatives versus the sort of Rubio stuff that we can see coming through. let's actually be a bit more like Tucker Carlson, let's be a bit more interventionist on the economy, and let's also keep the culture pedal down. And I think those are the strategic choices that the Republicans will face. And something that has clearly come through over the last few years is just how influential some of those voices really are. So if you look at what Trump did with the executive order on critical race theory, I mean, if you go back and you watch Tucker Carlson, I think the week before had the show and the guest saying, this is what Trump should do with his executive order.

He should remove all training involving critical race theory from federal agencies and institutions. And the next week, Trump did it, word for word. And so clearly this sort of orbit of Tucker Carlson and those people is clearly more influential than they used to be. So the Republicans will have this sort of strategic dialogue. Lema facing them after a Trump loss. Well, as someone who's been on Tucker Carlson,

right, and I have some very good ideas about what Donald Trump should do about YouTube. Donald, if you're watching, or Tucker, rather, if you're watching, get me on. I've got some great ideas that Donald needs to hear. But we joke about it, and you talk about the situation, American, the sort of clinical detached way, as is your job, you know, a professor of politics. But for me, as someone who's observing it, I find it very worrying. I find it incredibly worrying, this fraying of what you're really describing, if I can paraphrase it, is a country that had a uniting myth or uniting idea, no Harari would call it a uniting myth of some kind,

is now retreating into racial groups and no longer speaking to its common purpose, its common sense of who these people are. I mean, that's an incredibly dangerous recipe, isn't it? Yeah, but I try not to be apocalyptic because I think, you know, if you go through history, you know, there's always been apocalypticism and there's always been a sense of sort of doom and gloom and despair. And America is also the country that has been routinely written off over the years but has managed to hold itself together and keep going. And the American dream, we tend to forget this, but it is highly individualistic. I mean, it is ultimately about making yourself successful and rich and prosperous. And that is slightly different from the culture. that we are more used to, I think, in parts of Europe. So I'm probably less won over by the idea that America is suddenly going to fall apart. I think what is significant, perhaps, over the longer term, is that in some sense, the communal bonds that are there,

in some senses, are being undermined on different levels. And I think that's what's becoming problematic. You've got the educational divide where we can see people pulling away from one another. you've got this sort of distant insular political elite that is moving away from voters, both in terms of their backgrounds being very affluent, often being multi-millionaires, but also their social liberalism in many senses, their cultural liberalism. And then I think we've got this lack of external challenge and threat that is not allowing, I think, Americans to define themselves against that in a,

in a way that they would, for example, against Russia and against communism. And if anything, they're looking internally at the threats rather than externally. But we have to get away from this politics of deconstruction, because that is dangerous. I think the more or more people believe that you are deconstructing their imagined community and those unifying myths that you pointed to, what do they have to cling on to? because there isn't really much else for lots of people. And I think that's where we need to try and accept the good and the bad. And watching Nigel Bigger on your show, I think made this point very eloquently that history is complex.

And there are good bits and there are bad bits. And we need to accept both of those. But the puritanical approach to national history that we can see even today with the renaming of the building in Edinburgh, but also that we've seen in the United States. United States with the various projects that have been pushed by various media. I think it's incredibly unsettling for most voters who view their way of life and their traditions and identities as being not only eroded, but as not being valued and respected by those who are in power. That's just not a good place to be for anybody.

And you wrote your book, which is brilliant, and it's obviously all about populism. Do you think we're reaching the end of populism? still think it's got a way to go? Well, our argument certainly is that populism is entwined in democracies. You can never really get rid of it. It's sort of always there. And in a way, you wouldn't want to get rid of it because populism is, in some ways, there's a silver lining.

It's always reminding us that there are groups that are not represented in the system. And, you know, it's not the same as fascism. It's very different. It's quite organic. And it comes from... It comes from within. I love the way he always responds to our band. So you just ignores it and moves on.

No, but it comes from within the tensions of democracy. So we're not going to get rid of it. So populism has had a bad crisis. We look at all the polling across Europe and North America, Salvini, AFD in Germany, Bolsonaro in Brazil. They've had a bad coronavirus crisis. Their poll ratings have gone down. But we can also see during this crisis

that many of the social and economic divides that have been underpinning our society for the last 30 years are being exacerbated. Most of the people who lost their job early on were low-income, low-educated workers. Most of the people who suffered their health effects of coronavirus are those same groups. Meanwhile, we know the middle-class university graduates, winners have been at home, on Zoom, drinking quarantinis, and generally things have been, you know, okay. And what was interesting at the beginning of the crisis, at least for me,

is that our isolation at the beginning was compulsory. But over time, it's become voluntary. And some groups have been able to do it because it's been an economic luxury. and other groups haven't been able to do it. And so we've seen, again, this divergence between different groups. You've also seen it at the state level. If you look at the Eurozone, the economic divergence between North and South, has been exacerbated during this crisis.

And the recovery story in Europe will be one of different speed recoveries that will exacerbate the story of divergence between North and South. It's not to say the Eurozone is going to disintegrate, but it is to say that as we come out of this, the divides that really dominated the 2010s and led to what was one of the most volatile decades in a long time, those divides are going to still be with us and probably be a little bit bigger than they were in earlier years.

So what was the message of the 2010 Great Recession? I mean, if we had this conversation as the Lehman Brothers was collapsing and we said, let's predict what's going to happen as a consequence of this over the next 10 years, would we have predicted Trump, Brexit, Bolsonaro, Salvini, AFD, you know, Le Pen in the final round, etc., etc. We wouldn't have predicted it.

And I think the political effects of crises come downstream. We know this crisis is going to have political effects. We know this is going to lead to increase volatility. We know that voters are going to be disillusioned and pissed off. We just don't know how that is going to find its expression. Will it bring back the centre-left? because now voters are going to want to talk about economic redistribution, unemployment, inequality, tax, or will it bring back the populace?

Because voters are going to say, I've had enough of this, you know, this is just an unsustainable settlement. We don't know. All I think we can say for certain, and you can replay this in 2029, and we can all laugh at how wrong I was. But I think the 2020s are going to be just as volatile, if not more volatile, than the 2010s. Well, that's a nice positive note. Oh, great. Thanks, mate. At least he didn't promise to eat his hat. Yeah, yeah.

That could have been difficult. It's an interesting time, isn't it? It's a very interesting time. What do you, if you had a gun to your head, who's going to win in November? As of today, I think Biden will win. Really? Really? That's interesting. Why?

But as I said earlier, I think a lot can change. Yeah, of course it can. So we're just for clarity, we're recording this sort of early mid-September. for people who are watching later. Why at this point would you say that Biden will win? I think that the sheer hatred of Trump among various groups is going to boost turnout and conceal many of the weaknesses that still face the Democrats,

the lack of a positive unifying message, all of the things that we've talked about, Biden's personality issues, and so on. I think for millions of Americans, Trump is so ghastly, and it's such in their eyes an aberration that I think we will see turnout around the block. And I think that will be millennials, Zuma, African Americans. It will be liberal graduates. And I think we'll be surprised at the backlash to Trump.

That's really interesting, because I think it's going to be that way. I still think a lot can change. I just think where we are now. Yeah. And we see it every day on social media. I think for Americans, I think the Trump project has just been so existential, you know, that when we get closer to November,

they will all individually be mulling over, you know, that question of what can I do to get America into a different place. And, you know, turn out maybe high on both sides. But I think as of now, also given where Biden is, just in terms of statistics and polling, I mean, he's got a stronger lead than Clinton had. He's got a more sustainable lead. In some of the swing states, you know, in some ways he's got an easier path to win the Electoral College than Clinton did.

And he's got big guns he can bring out. He's got some big guns in terms of people who, who can help him along the campaign. Like Obama, you mean? Like Obama, yeah. Anyone else? I think Obama...

Well, well, there's two Obama's. Good point. Yeah. I think they're still incredibly powerful. The question which one of them is bigger, by the way. I think they're incredibly powerful. I think Obama is still for a generation of Americans. I think, you know, as we get into the final straight,

they are going to be bombarded by those big guns. And do you think as well, the reason Obama is so powerful is that when he walks on stage, he's a statesman-like figure, even if you disagree with his politics, the way he holds a stage, the way he conducts himself, the way he speaks, he comes across like a president. And when you combine it with someone like Trump and the way he's so divisive on Twitter and inflammatory, that that is really going to be the thing that pushes Biden over the line? I think Obama appeals to the better angels of people's nature.

I think he is more focused on the unifying aspects of American culture and identity. And I'm not to say that's, I'm not saying I'm necessarily a pro or anti. I just think as a strategist and a politician, he's better at getting people to turn out than Biden is. And I think probably he's a lot better at doing that than Trump is. And if you go back and you watch the 2016 campaign, Obama really did keep his distance from Hillary.

He wasn't as prominent as perhaps we might have expected him to be. And this time I think he's taken it very personally. And you can see that in how the campaign has been evolving around Biden. And I think for a lot of people, even today, you know, I read that Bloomberg is giving Biden 100 million for Florida. I think a lot of the old guard elite have taken Trump very, very, very. personally. Now, I completely accept there's an argument, as we saw in Britain,

that if you line up the elite, voters will rebel even more. But I think even among ordinary Americans, I think there's something about the Trump project that will increase their turnout in a way that may

be problematic for Trump. But let's agree to... We'll see. What the hell do I know? You're much more of an expert in this. You should come on more. often. He's actually positively humbled today. No, I know. I'm just a presence of great... Which for me working with you

is a rarity, can I just say? What do you think is going to happen, France? He thinks the same thing as me. Listen, I predicted Trump, I predicted Brexit. The only thing I didn't predict was Leicester City. I went for Spurs in the Premier League. Who's going to win in November? Trump? Sorry, two Trumps and a

Biden. I'll tell you what, though, if you do think, whoever you think, there's a lot of value in the betting markets right now. Yeah, for sure. For sure. We do not endorse gambling or whatever Gary, the lawyer, told us not to say. In any shape. We've got to let Matt go, so we've just got time for our final question.

I wanted to ask me if we thought Trump's been a good person. But anyway, we won't do that. Yeah, that wouldn't divide or say anybody. I'll put him in a difficult position. In any way. In any shape, go for the last question. Okay, cool. So what's the one thing we always end with,

which is what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Great question. I think we have gone through two stages. post-2016, right? Big 2016 revolts. I think the first stage was, get this stuff out of here. You know, democracy is over. These guys are fascists. I think where we are now, the second stage, much more interesting. We're beginning finally to talk about the very understandable reasons why people felt they'd lost out from the settlement. And that's reflected in an array of new

books that have come out that have been questioning things like, where are, Heritocracy has gone wrong, that have been questioning whether we got it right with the liberal consensus, that have been questioning how liberalism has come unstuck and become quite destructive and quite narcissistic. I've been going back and reading a lot of interesting books in the 90s, Christopher Lash and others, looking at what they tell us about today. And I think we want to stay there, it would be my answer, Francis. We want to keep the conversation focused on what led us to come unstuck in the first place. Because one of my fears is Biden wins in November.

Bolsonaro loses in Brazil. Kier Stama and the SMP win via coalition in 2024, 25. And we sort of say liberalism is back, social democracy is back. We don't have anything to worry about. let's carry on, because I think that would be incredibly misleading. I think where we are now, where we're getting to, is a much more interesting national conversation, finally, about what brought us here in the first place,

and how can we make people's lives better, and whether that's through the leveling up agenda in the UK or whether it's about coming up with interesting counter policies to Trump, to help some of the Rust Belt states, or whatever it is, that's the more interesting place to be rather than this kind of polarized, shouting match between both sides. So let's try and stay there, I suppose, would be my plea.

Does that answer your question? It does indeed. And thank you so much for coming on, Matt. If people want to find you on Twitter, social media, where's the best place for it? My Twitter feed. Yeah, which is? At Goodwin, MJ.

At Goodwin, MJ. And make sure you get national populism a revolt against liberal democracy. It's a great book. We've talked with Matt several times, as you'll know. Thank you for watching, and we will see you very soon. brilliant episode or live stream.

And they all go out 7pm UK time Tuesday right the way through to Sunday. See you soon, guys.