Larry Jacobs on America's Broken Political Process

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

Military, Intelligence, International Law, Constitutional Law, Rule Of Law, Politics, International Relations, News, Government, History, Diplomacy, Terrorism, National Security, Current Events, Law, Foreign Policy

4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

American political life is defined by what can seem like a paradox. Our society is incredibly politically polarized, but our parties are as weak as they've ever been. How else could a reality TV star have so quickly and completely taken control of one of our major political parties?

For Larry Jacobs, a political scientist and professor at the University of Minnesota, the weakness of our parties is a major threat to American democracy. But as he explains in his new book, “Democracy under Fire: Donald Trump and the Breaking of American History,” the roots of this weakness go back all the way to the earliest years of the United States and today manifest in our broken system of presidential primaries.

Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Larry about his new book, his diagnosis of what ails American politics and what, if anything, can be done to fix it.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair
0:07.2	podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:18.2	Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair
0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
0:32.6	Okay, well, who are the primary voters?
0:36.3	In presidential elections, which is the big kind of political festival, you know, where you
0:42.7	have the height of participation, only a quarter or a third of Democrats and Republicans
0:48.1	turn out and vote in primaries. When the Tea Party won, you know, races in the 2010 election,
0:57.7	many of those races had turnouts of around 12 or 15% of Republicans.
1:02.8	When AOC won her nomination against a very well-established Democrat who was rising the power structure,
1:09.6	some thought would be a successor to Nancy Pelosi, turn out among Democrats is 12%.
1:17.1	So, you know, is this of these primary voters, you know, representing America?
1:23.4	I'm Alan Rosenstein and this is the LawFair podcast, April 15, 2022.
1:30.6	American political life is defined by what can seem like a paradox.
1:34.3	Our society is incredibly politically polarized, but our parties are as weak as they've ever
1:39.1	been.
1:40.1	How else could a reality TV star have so quickly and completely taken control of one of
1:44.9	our major political parties?
1:47.1	For Larry Jacobs, a political scientist and one of my colleagues at the University of
1:50.7	Minnesota, the weakness of our parties is a major threat to American democracy.
1:55.7	But as he explains in his new book, Democracy Under Fire, Donald Trump in the Breaking
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

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

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