Election R&D Dialogues: The Debate That Never Was
Let's Find Common Ground
USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future
5.0 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 19 October 2020
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Center Director Bob Shrum is joined by political strategist Doug Thornell and journalists Ronald Brownstein and Asma Khalid to discuss President Trump and Joe Biden's dueling Town Halls, following Trump's refusal to participate in a virtual presidential debate originally scheduled for the same day.
Brownstein is a Senior Political Analyst at CNN and serves as Atlantic Media's Editorial Director for Strategic Partnerships in charge of long-term editorial strategy. Khalid is a political correspondent for NPR who co-hosts The NPR Politics Podcast. Thornell is Partner and Head of SKDKPolitical, having served as a media strategist to the Democratic National Committee, Congressional Black Caucus, and various House, Senate, and gubernatorial campaigns.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Election R&D from the University of Southern California's Center for the Political Future. |
| 0:10.8 | Our podcast brings together America's top politicians, journalists, academics, and strategists from across the political spectrum for discussions on hot button issues where we respect each other |
| 0:22.0 | and respect the truth. We hope you enjoy these conversations. |
| 0:29.9 | Welcome, everyone. I'm Bob Shrum, the director of the Center for the Political Future at USC Dornsife. |
| 0:39.6 | We originally scheduled this because it was going to come after the second presidential debate. So now we call it the debate that never |
| 0:44.4 | was, or sort of never was, which I'll get to in a minute. I want to thank our partners at the |
| 0:50.3 | Rancho Mirage Writers' Festival and Jamie Cableer in particular. And I want to introduce each of our |
| 0:56.1 | guests. Ron Brownstein is a senior political analyst at CNN. He also serves as the Atlantic Media's |
| 1:04.4 | editorial director for strategic partnerships. And he writes a weekly column for the Atlantic as he does for |
| 1:09.9 | CNN. For 23 years, which may be a record, he had a weekly column for the Atlantic as he does for CNN. |
| 1:16.8 | For 23 years, which may be a record, he had a column every week in the LA Times. |
| 1:24.5 | Asma Khalid is a political correspondent for NPR, who co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast. |
| 1:29.4 | She's covering the 2020 presidential campaign, and she also reported on 2014, 2016, and 2018. She focuses on the intersection of demographics and politics. We're |
| 1:36.8 | going to talk about that today. And she was awarded the Missouri Honor Medal for her coverage |
| 1:41.2 | in 2016. Doug Thornell is a partner at SKD. Nickerbocker, one of the leading |
| 1:46.8 | public affairs and consulting firms in the nation. He served as a media strategist for House, |
| 1:52.2 | Senate, and gubernatorial campaigns and progressive and civil rights organizations, and he's been a lead |
| 1:58.1 | media strategist for the Democratic National Committee and a top advisor for the Congressional Black Caucus. |
| 2:04.0 | So I think I have to start off by just giving everybody a chance to say what they thought of the debate that never was, the town meetings last night. |
| 2:15.2 | Ron? |
| 2:16.0 | Yeah, I'll jump in. |
| 2:17.1 | I think the overriding point about the these dueling town meetings is that they are not likely to be |
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