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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique, fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe, expose corruption wherever we find it, and give fresh perspective on everything from wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Multiple things can be true at once. Joe Biden can be the president-elect while the outgoing guy refuses to acknowledge it. Americans can celebrate the results in the streets while others protest and cry foul.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Canada and the United Kingdom can call Biden to congratulate him while China and Russia hold off.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: None of this changes the fact that Joe Biden will likely be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States this January.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But American democracy is being tested right now. Some people are totally oblivious to the fact. Others are writing op-eds about an attempted coup.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Zeynep Tufekci finds herself somewhere in the middle. I think we should worry about what's happening for sure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She's a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm really not expecting some coup to happen, maybe because my standards for coup are a little higher.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm from the Middle East, so I don't really expect that as part of the American experience.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that said, it really is troublesome to have this charade go on for longer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what I'm seeing is that the president is refusing to accept reality because it kind of cuts into his narrative, I don't lose.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That doesn't mean it's OK for the GOP leadership to kind of play along, because what I'm seeing them do is play along, but clearly understanding that there's not going to be effective legal challenges.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump has rejected any suggestion that he has lost the election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Instead, he continues to make claims of voter fraud with no evidence while his campaign pursues more legal challenges to the vote count in several battleground states.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They say they will continue to file lawsuits.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So far, they have they have a diversified portfolio of litigation claiming everything from fraud to not getting access to vote counts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For the most part, judges have dismissed the lawsuits that they reviewed, saying that they're just not supported by any significant evidence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We don't need their permission to look into these allegations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We owe it to those who voted for President Trump and the country at large to test this system.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If we don't deal with voting by mail in 2020, we'll never win the White House again.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's talk about the legal challenges for a second, because there are many legal challenges, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the president and members of his legal team keep emphasizing all of these legal challenges.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And a lot of Republicans are out there saying, count every legal vote as if there were many illegal votes cast here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are there legitimate legal challenges thus far to this election?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: I'll just start by saying something that might sound not very good at this partisan moment, in that our ability to audit elections sucks.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: It is something we should have fixed after 2000.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: This race is simply too close to call.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: And until the results, the recount is concluded and the results of Florida, Florida become official.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: Our campaign continues.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bill Daley, the chairman of the Gore campaign, you just heard it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're all, I think we can hardly believe our ears.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's something we should have fixed after 2016.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nearly three weeks now after Election Day and the recount set to begin in Wisconsin and perhaps two more battleground states, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: President-elect outraged over the recount and the Clinton team very careful to point out they are not leading this charge.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a lot of sensible things one can do to make sure these kinds of fears, they don't find themselves staring into a void.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's the ground on which this kind of deliberate sowing of mistrust can thrive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That said, there are really no suspicions for the kind of widespread fraud that would overturn this election or any election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the Florida 2001 is not a good precedent at all, because that was one state separated by a couple hundred votes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They know this is going to end, but the damage it does to an already lowering of trust in the United States towards a lot of our institutions, including our elections, is just going to get much worse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we're all going to pay the price for that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they're going to pay the price for that too, in that we're going to have a less well-functioning society.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Everybody who knows anything about this knows this, including the GOP leadership.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they're just letting this go on, which is terrible
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It already happening actually
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There is a poll Politico published that says 70 of Republicans believe this election was free and fair
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I know this election didn't quite bolster everyone's faith in polls but even if 50 percent of Republicans right now don't believe that president Joe Biden is legitimate that's a Democratic crisis
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's very troubling.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think I've been writing, we have to do things to restore trust in our electoral system, pieces for at least 10 years, if not more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I could literally pick one of them and publish it right now and just change a few like dates and places.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it would stand because this is no way for a wealthy country to run an election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, it is a week after the election and we're still in this, you know, the provisionals, this is this and who's updated and what's going on and this glitch and that glitch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And again, while there's no evidence or reason to think there's widespread fraud, it just keeps getting worse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's really terrible to see this happen like this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think I know the answer, but why is it happening? Why won't Republican leadership condemn the president's false accusations of election fraud?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why won't Republican leadership acknowledge that their friend and colleague, Joe Biden, is the president-elect of the United States?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: They're trying to placate the base of the Republican Party that overwhelmingly likes this person, right?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: This is something that may be hard to accept for, you know, a lot of people who just look at this and say, how can they like this guy?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: But they do.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: And, you know, what, 70 million people voted for him and he's out there crying fraud and riling up people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the Republican base, as long as that connection exists, the established Republicans, the Mitch McConnells of the world are thinking, all right, how do we not, you know, upset our supporters who are going to vote for us in the future?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And who voted for them this time, too, because of the outgoing president on some level, right?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: Yeah, exactly.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: If they were thinking country before party, this is the time to stage an intervention and say, this is it.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: If you have any proper legal claims, it's been a week on the table now, or make that call, concede, be gracious.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: And then, you know, just sort of, you can declare victory too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He can just say, and he has done this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has given them a 6-3 Republican appointed majority in the Supreme Court.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Republicans look like they're controlling the Senate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They have gained in the House.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The House Democrats have a razor thin majority and they control a large number of state legislatures.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So like the Republican Party is sitting quite pretty except for the presidency.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the president-elect Joe Biden is something that is not an existential threat to their hold on power.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: So they could just declare victory and avert the crisis.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: And I think, again, it's just showing once you let these kinds of populist authoritarian urges and electoral politics out of the bottle, it unleashes things that are destabilizing and dangerous for the country.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: And I think if like they had a magic wand, they would just send them on his way and be happy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But when you have a crybaby in the White House, you cannot manage this by finessing it.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: Does that end soon or does that playbook outlast this presidency?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: I think the playbook is quite likely here to stay.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: His loss is a razor thin loss in a couple of States.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: And that's really important to sort of recognize because voting one person out of office may feel good.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: But if you have a structural problem, it's quite possible that there will be others.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: Others without the same kind of liabilities he has, which is being incompetent and being a crybaby and tweeting too much for his own good.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he is not the strongest form of this kind of playbook, which brings together sort of this strong man, celebrity often, somebody with the kind of ability to generate a loyal following with this disregard for the regular institutions of centrist liberal democracy and win elections.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This happens around the world, and there's no reason to think this won't happen here again in 2024, 2028.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The playbook is there, and it's something that's on the rise around the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More with Zeynep in a minute.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can open an account in two minutes at Chime.com slash explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Zainab, before the break, you were saying that despite what a lot of Americans might think, if you look around the world, the outgoing president's leadership style isn't exactly unique.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: Well, I would say this is almost textbook authoritarian populism.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: And some of the outlines of this are you promise more support for the people, which is often defined around the world as your supporters.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: The thing that I think distinguishes Trump from his counterparts around the world, if you want to look at like Orban in Hungary, you want to look at Bolsonaro in Brazil, you want to look at Erdogan in Turkey, is that those people are talented and competent politicians, right?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: Trump is not that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Remember Infrastructure Week?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: I don't actually.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right? Like, exactly.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: That's my point, is that the other politicians who run on this deliver something to their supporters, and they win elections again, whereas Trump was more interested in, I don't know, bookings in his hotel than what happened in Wisconsin, right?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: to the working class there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He just tweeted about it and he announced this or that there, but he didn't really follow through with any of it in an effective way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And had he followed through, it's quite possible that he could have cruised into re-election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And once again, I want people to sort of understand this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He lost by a razor thin margin in a couple of states.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And had he been slightly more competent, Like had he used the pandemic as what a lot of strong men can do, crisis, I'm here for you, and just kind of said, all right, I'll rescue you and taken some effective actions early on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think he could have really easily won.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And people need to understand the Republican Party consolidated its gains across the board from the Supreme Court to state legislatures.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The GOP has this enormous hold on power that is aided by the anti-majoritarian and minority boosting elements of our Constitution, which include the Senate, and are boosted by deliberate things like redistricting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is a dangerous kind of environment to have.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why was this still a very successful election for the Republicans when he didn't really deliver on his populist promise?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What he delivered were tax cuts and a lot of rhetoric about a wall that still hasn't been successfully built.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: Well, you need to understand a couple of things.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: One of them is that the CARES Act was quite successful.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: I don't think people have kind of internalized this.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: But for so many people, their household finances are better right now than before the pandemic.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: because there was a big welfare state-like spending through that legislation.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: Like if you look at the household finances, and if you look at people, if they're asked, are you doing better now economically than four years ago, the majority of people say yes, which is in fact striking because when you have so many people, a majority say they're doing better financially compared to four years ago, It's almost unheard of for an incumbent to lose despite that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What I'm saying is that had he been slightly better at the presentation part and not turned off so many people with the vulgarity and everything else, he could have been cruising into election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The second thing is I don't think Democratic Party and most people understand what they're facing, which is a successful populist political realignment in this country that is not losing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is making gains.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think on the Democratic side of the aisle, there's a lot of denial about the actual state of politics in this country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that denial may well be boosted by having won against President Trump by a razor-thin margin and may blind people to these underlying currents that are still there and very strong.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in 2024, we'll be having this discussion again because the opposition, both in his party and the opposition party, the Democratic Party, does not rise to the challenge of effective politics against the strain of populism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What might that strain look like next in America?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, economically speaking, it would be a similar set of promises, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A recognition that globalization hasn't worked for everybody in this country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The way he talks about corruption, those all resonate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you can imagine a version of this that has the same rhetoric and isn't, for example, say, as overtly racist in the rhetoric as he has been.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It would be someone with the charisma and the media following.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It could be someone like Tucker Carlson of the world who have a very similar economic populist talk
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I hate to be like this downer person just warning and warning
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the reality is like it a movie we have seen before around the world
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in some ways, it was almost lucky for the United States to have gotten an incompetent version of this populist right-wing ethno-nationalist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The next one will not be this easy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because a lot of talented politicians are looking at this and saying, I could go through that door.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So how can all this momentum be slowed down?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you know, can this be fixed?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm a professor and I'm going to say this kind of slightly self-deprecating, but I mean this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think a lot of people in the democratic institutions, think tanks, NGOs, running the campaigns are very good students.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there's this expectation that somebody will come and give them a good grade because things were unfair and they tried.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I just want to say, nobody's going to come and say, yeah, the Senate is unfair. Here's your A.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's not how it's going to work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Senate is unfair and the job is to figure out how to make it more fair, despite the fact that, yes, it is unfair and nobody's going to wave a magic wand and fix this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the sooner they recognize this reality and just say, all right, you know, complaining about this isn't going to get us anywhere.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We can point it out as a part of our electoral strategy, but you can only go so far with that too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how do you create the kind of moment where you can fix this, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The kind of moment where you have the presidency, where you have the Senate, where you have state legislatures and you pass the Voting Rights Act. that's federal and that fixes a lot of whatever can be fixed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just being well-meaning is not enough to fix things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Be recognizing reality and saying, okay, things aren't fair, things aren't great, but here we are.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's the first step to digging out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But don't a lot of people not want to dig out?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of people don't find the Senate unfair.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Something like 70 million people in this country said keep things the way they are, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Don't a lot of people like it this way?
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: A lot of people may like it that way, but I think we need to make the case that a lower functioning society that gets every year is not good for anyone, even if they are temporarily on the winning side of their own political party.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: It's not good for any of us to have a country that can't handle a pandemic response, despite You know, being home to CDC, previously the stellar public health organization.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: And this is true, like just at so many levels.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: This is not to anyone's benefit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What does that mean, though? Like a lower functioning society?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, people probably look at this society and don't think it's very functional.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: OK, so let's just be fair here.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: A lot of people are still trying to come here for a reason.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: Right.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: There's a reason that people try to immigrate to the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if people think that this is some non-functioning society and that's just the way it is, I want to say as someone not from this country, this is not the baseline of low functioning, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is in many ways a wealthy country that has a lot of advantages and a lot of things like it's losing, but it's losing from a relatively high point for a lot of people.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: So I am not like making light of the existing problems.
--:-- Zeynep Tufekci: problems.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Remind me what it will look like when it gets worse, because it seems bad right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't have a crystal ball on what it would look like, but if we don't fix it, it's not going to get better.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's going to get worse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, Zeynep, I appreciate it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for entertaining my plea to see your crystal ball.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sorry about that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I just want to say, like, this is not the hopeless thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It just requires realism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can't do it through nostalgia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are a lot of things that were wrong before.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I'm not saying, well, let's go back to 20.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's not pearl clutching, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm not wishing for some past.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The past was more racist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The past was more sexist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, I'm not wishing for that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you have to look forward with realism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And once you do that, then you can start trying to reverse this vicious cycle and create a positive one where things improve and then get better in turn.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Zeynep Tuvekshi, she's a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and she's got a newsletter called Insight where you can read more of her work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find it at zeynep.substack.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Zeynep is Z-E-Y-N-E-P.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: once again for the Commonwealth, Z-E-Y-N-E-P dot substack dot com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just a reminder that all the major news networks, including Fox News, have called the election for Joe Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if you're still worried about his chances with all the delegitimizing going on, here are the dates to watch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The states must certify their results by December 8th and the Electoral College votes December 14th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The outgoing guy can sue all he wants until then, But once things are figured out, they've closed the books historically.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Congress rubber stamps in early January.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Inauguration January 20th.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramos-Firm.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's the beauty of generative AI that's commercially safe.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Teams all across your business will be psyched to collaborate and create amazing presentations, videos, social posts, flyers, and more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Meet Adobe Express, the quick and easy app to create on-brand content.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Learn more at adobe.com slash express slash business.