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Welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm your host, Adam Schatz. Today we're discussing the American election with two guests, both of whom are contributors to the LRB. The first is

Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School. The second is Mike Davis, who appeared on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.

Hi, Randall. It's great to have you on the LRB podcast today. Thanks so much for having me.

So the people have spoken and there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have

prevailed, both in the popular vote and in the electoral college. And the bad news is that more than

70 million Americans looked at the last four years of incompetence, cruelty, a state-assisted national

health care crisis, and they decided that they wanted four more years of this.

I'm wondering how you read the outcome of this election.

Well, I think you put it very nicely.

We have to face those two facts.

On the one hand, I'm relieved.

I mean, I can't, when it looked as though Trump was going to prevail, I felt sick.

And I thought that the country was headed towards immediate ruination. I felt better in the

subsequent days and when it was clear that Biden Harris was going to prevail, yes, I felt better

and I do feel relieved. And I don't want to, I don't want to downplay it. I mean,

Biden Harris are ousting an incumbent president. That does not happen very often.

Hasn't happened in 25 years, I think. That's something. Incumbency counts a great deal and they were

...