Ronald Brownstein: From the 2018 Midterms to the 2020 Elections

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2018

⏱️ 121 minutes

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Summary

Ronald Brownstein is a Senior Editor at The Atlantic, Senior Political Analyst at CNN, and a shrewd observer of American politics. In this Conversation, Brownstein shares his perspective on how the midterms reveal further intensification of the geographic and demographic divisions in American politics. Brownstein and Bill Kristol then look ahead to 2020. They assess the strengths and weaknesses of both parties, the key cultural and economic issues that are likely to feature in the campaigns, and whether President Trump might be vulnerable to a primary challenge. This is must-see electoral and political analysis at the highest level.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined again today
0:19.2	by Ron Roundsstein. We've had two of these, these I believe in June 2017 and June 2018.
0:25.0	Everything you said was correct.
0:27.0	Now we're meeting post-election to discuss what happened in November 2018.
0:31.0	We can keep doing it till we get it right. Yeah that would be endless but no but we're
0:36.4	approximating. Yes exactly. We're getting there. I think those will people should watch those
0:40.3	those will stand up very well but let's not go back and let's just if someone came down from Mars,
0:46.2	I mean or if a Vio Ki or some wonderful former student of American politics were resurrected and he said,
0:51.0	what's going on, Ron? What is what Ron what is what is the current state of
0:54.7	American electoral policies? Well look as we talked about in those earlier
0:57.7	sessions I believe we are living through an overlapping demographic and
1:01.8	geographic sorting out of the country.
1:04.6	And that all of those trends have really acquired more top spin under Trump,
1:09.1	meaning that they are accelerating.
1:11.5	What we saw in the 2018 election was a confirmation and really an intensification of the division and the restructuring, reconfiguring of American politics that was very evident in 2016,
1:26.7	both demographically in terms of the divide by age, younger people moving more
1:31.8	Democratic, Republicans still very solid among older,
1:34.4	although some chinks in that armor this time.
1:37.6	Second, the widest, wider divides between college and non-college whites as the republic as the price of
1:44.6	Trump's effort to generate these enormous margins among working class older
1:49.7	blue-collar evangelical white voters is a backlash among college educated white voters, especially women.
1:57.0	And then this incredible, I think, and maybe the most striking of all, geographic divide divide where Metro America pretty much everywhere
	...

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