Are Democracies Failing?

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.7 • 963 Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2020

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

According to Ian Bremmer, the President of the Eurasia Group, the global pandemic is revealing the extent to which democracies have been failing over the past years. To strengthen them, he proposes that they should re-establish faith in the system by regulating social media, shifting away from American exceptionalism, and embracing an innovative approach to capitalism. In this conversation, Ian Bremmer and Yascha Mounk debate how different political systems have dealt with COVID-19, how capitalism has fared amidst the pandemic, and what western democracies need to do to live up to their promises. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John T. Williams and Rebecca Rashid Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	With a crisis like this, what the individual leader does actually really matters.
0:10.0	Not only have we done badly, we should have done much better than everyone else because we had such capabilities.
0:15.8	We had the science, we have the experience, but we also had a president that refused to take responsibility and lead when it comes to this kind of
0:27.0	a crisis.
0:28.0	And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.
0:40.0	As I am recording this little spiel with which I tend to start the podcast, it is less than three weeks until the US election.
0:45.0	And of course we have learned four years ago not to trust the polls completely.
0:50.0	And yet, all indications currently are that Joe Biden will beat Donald Trump and that he will beat him quite convincingly.
0:59.0	So I can't help starting to think about what it would mean if that turns out to be true.
1:08.2	And I think that it would undermine a dominant and quite pessimistic theory about American politics in two ways.
1:18.0	Over the last four years we have essentially come to agree with Donald Trump about his theory of politics,
1:24.2	that racism seems to play well in American politics that he has gained from his racist
1:29.7	provocations and that there aren't really any swing voters who are relevant anymore.
1:33.5	You can win in national politics just by mobilizing your base.
1:38.1	Well, thankfully, it looks as though Joe Biden is proving both parts of that Trumpian theory of American politics
1:45.0	which has come to be accepted even by many pundits and political scientists who love
1:49.4	Trump as false. According to current polls, Biden is making up a huge amount of ground among the demographic groups that went very strongly for Trump in 2016 among voters over 65
2:06.2	Among white voters including in the suburbs and the exops and even in rural areas
2:11.4	Actually insofar as Trump has gained it all over the last four years,
2:15.3	interestingly, it is among younger voters and people of color. And secondly, most importantly,
2:22.0	it looks less and less plausible that the vast majority of Americans
2:27.3	voted for Trump because of his racism in 2016, or that they're abandoning him now despite his racism.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Yascha Mounk, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Yascha Mounk and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.