Is there any precedent for these unpresident ial acts . Almost 74 million votes. I have a great panel of historians to discuss that, and the legacy of trumps term in office. An eyeopening discovery that may save your life one day. A way to edit the genetic code itself. A newly minted Nobel Laureate tells me about the promise of crispr. But first, heres my take. More than 150 million americans made their own personal decisions when they voted in this years election, but it is now the unenviable job of commentators to explain the meaning of those choices. At the broadest level its fair to say that the vote was a repudiation of donald trump. President s rarely lose their bids for reelection. Only five in the last 125 years and trump has won as few electoral votes as his nemesis, hillary clinton, did last time and he lost the popular vote by a larger margin than when jimmy carter defeated gerald ford in the wake of watergate. And yet its obvious that the country remains deeply divided. After an impeachment, a pandemic, and the worst economic paralysis since the great depression, republicans overwhelmingly voted for their party and democrats did the same. Polarization is now deep, tribal and existential, largely unaffected by events for job performance. When things get bad in sports, it seems to have become a greater test of loyalty to stay with your team. Democrats are more disappointed because they had hoped that this election would be one that Resoundingly Repudiated Trump and realigned politics. Those expectations were fed by their success in 2018 as well as preelection polls which seemed to have been just about as inaccurate as those in 2016. The largest disappointment surely should be that in a year in which democrats fully embraced ideas about multiculturism and movements like black lives matter, donald trump appears to have won the second largest share of the minority vote of any republican since 1976 according to exit polls. He won the largest percentage of the black votes since 1996, but he still only got 12 . He won 35 of the muslim vote. What happened . There are probably many answers. Partly James Carvell is still right. It is the economy, stupid. Many of these groups prospered during most of trumps presidency and they seem unwilling to blame him for the handling of the pandemic and the ensuing economic collapse. To the extent that democrats were associated with lockdowns and republicans with reopening the economy, covid19 may have actually helped President Trump with some as well. But my own interpretation of these results is informed by feelings i have always had about the Democratic Partys ideology of multiculturism. It lumps a wide variety of ethnic, racial and religious groups into one minority monolith and approaches them from a perspective that does not fit us all. The dominant democratic approach is that minorities face deep systemic discrimination in america and need to be protected with active measures by the government across a series of fronts. This idea is rooted in the experience of blacks for whom it is entirely applicable. Americas treatment of blacks has been cruel with policies that have broken their families and treated them either as subhumans or secondclass citizens. Historical structural barriers have left a Lasting Imprint and discrimination still persists to this day. Other immigrants to america almost all of whom came voluntary, not bound in chains, have had a very different experience. While we have also encountered discrimination and exclusion, we have found a country that on the whole has been far more open and receptive to foreigners than most other places. That means that an ideology born of the treatment of African Americans will ring false to american immigrants and their descendants. For us, Harsh Treatment by White Americans is not the single searing experience that shapes our politics. Some of us are socially liberal, others conservative, some view themselves as selfreliant entrepreneurs, and some seek to assimilate by distancing themselves from newer immigrants or blacks. Some of the most racist americans i know are themselves minorities. Even blacks vary much more widely on policy than might be imagined. A recent gallup poll, for instance, found that only 19 of blacks want less Police Presence in their neighborhoods while 61 want the same amount and 20 actually want more. So slogans like defund the place pushed by the most woke activists on twitter might unwittingly turn off mainstream African Americans. Let me give you a personal example to explain one minority mindset. Ever since i applied for a scholarship to colleges in the United States 39 years ago, i have almost always left blank the line on the form that asks for my ethnic or racial classification except when its legally required as in the census. I just dont feel right piggybacking on tragedies that have affected blacks, Native Americans and others who have truly faced discrimination. Most of all, to quote a great american, i have always wanted to be judged by the content of my character, not the color of my skin. The Democratic Party should remember that for many minorities our greatest aspiration is simply to be regular americans, treated no worse, but no better either. Go to cnn. Com fareed for a link to my Washington Post column, and lets get started. Tuesday will mark four weeks since the u. S. Election and former Vice President biden has passed 18 million in the popular vote and 306 votes in the Electoral College which meets on december 14th. Just about every world leader with a few notable exceptions has congratulated biden on his victory. Just about every legal challenge from the trump team has crumbled and no credible evidence of widespread fraud has been offered. Yet the man sitting in the oval office has yet to concede and few Senior Republicans have acknowledged the elections results. How will history look on this. I am joined by three eminent historians. Doris Kerns Goodwin wrote an absolutely fantastic book about Franklin Roosevelt. Jon meacham won the pulitzer prize. He advises joe biden occasionally on major speeches. Niall ferguson has written The Rothchild Family to world war i to henry kissinger. He is a Senior Fellow at the hoover institution. Niall, let me start with you and ask you, what do you think is the message in biden being elected, trump being denied a second term, but the senate apparently staying republican, the democrats not doing so well in the house . Make sense of that. Well, i am going to disagree with your monologue, fareed, which is very presumptuous of me. What you said, you began by saying the country was deeply divided and then you went on to show that actually when you look at voting, it cut across racial divisions quite clearly. And i would argue this election has been the victory of the Center Running against a great deal of media commentary, some of yours, that foresaw a constitutional crisis, if not an outright civil war. This election wasnt the 1860 election that led to civil war after lincolns victory. It wasnt 1876 when a bunch of states sent Rival Electors to washington and the whole thing ended up being stitched up in a rather seamy deal. In fact for me the most surprising is you had the highest turnout since 1900, both sides successfully mobilizing voters. But the country collectively voted for the center ground. Joe biden, the personification of the political middle, emerged just victorious, but a very narrow victory. In fact, by the standards of the Democratic Party, the narrowest and weakest showing since 1884 because every president since Grover Cleveland on the democratic side has come into office with both houses of congress in democratic hands and that seems likely not to be the case unless the democrats can pull off a surprise success in the georgia runoffs. If you look at the way people voted, there were clearly republicans who voted for down ballot republican candidates but not for donald trump. He underperformed, the candidates for the senate and house in a bunch of places. So i think the country actually collectively voted for the middle ground and repudiated trumps more extreme positions. Ultimately people had had enough of him and they repudiated the radical agenda of the socialist left of the Democratic Party. I am left in a cheerful mood in the wake of this result relative to those people who predicted the downfall of the republic. Jon meacham, do you look at it that way . What im struck by is the courts have held up very well. I think they have shot down 38 of trumps lawsuits. Had it not been for a series of small number of State Republicans who went against what the president was urging them to do, who went against what their party often was telling them to do, and actually chose to certify results or not entertain or indulge arguments of voter fraud, it could have looked somewhat different, or, you know, is it is nialls benign sense that the system worked the right way to look at it . I think both are true. If i could offer an angle very briefly, i think he is right. I think the premise of your question is right. The rule of law has held just barely. But thats what Human Governments do, right . The framers understood that most of what we would want to do would be bad. I am adherent to the notion that the constitution is fundamentally a calvinist document. It assumes that we are sinful and fallen and frail and fallible. So we are checking and balancing our appetites and ambitions. And in extremists, which is where many of us, including me, believe we have been in the last three years or so, four years or so, there were people who stood up and followed the rule of law, which is essential. In the line attributed to churchill, you could always count on the americans to do the right thing once we exhausted every other possibility. We came awfully close there. I believe this was an election, in my mind, has restored a conversation that dominated American Politics between 1933 and 2017. It was a figurative one between a position largely defined by fdr and by lbj on one end, and on the other end by Ronald Reagan and george w. Bush. And every president through obama governed as part of that conversation. The last four years have not been a sequential chapter. I believe that a biden presidency will be a sequential chapter to that historical conversation. Doris, does joe biden come in with a mandate . I mean, certainly not a mandate like fdr came in in 1932. But when you look at other ones, what does he come into office with kind of an ideological Momentum Terms . Well, i think the crisis provides him with a mandate for a hunger for leadership, number one. I mean, that was the hunger that brought fdr in. In fdrs time it was easier. They said they forgot to be democrats and republicans because they wanted to respond to the crisis. This is a huge crisis were facing. I think there was a hunger and still will be with National Plans to deal with it. What it reminds me more even more than fdr and the depression because he had a larger mandate is when Teddy Roosevelt comes in. The similarities between then and now are so great. The industrial order was shaking up the economy much as globalization and the tech order have today. We have this huge gap between the rich and the poor. You had people in the city who were suspicious of people in the country. You had sectionalism. Teddy warned people in different sections and classes were viewing each other as the other rather than as common american citizens, that kind of tribal politics we are seeing today. But leadership was able to come in at his level and argue for a square deal. This goes back to what niall was saying, a square deal for the rich and poor so as long as rich act fairly. So long as the unions act with wisdom. He was going to deal with the worst aspects of the industrial order and he was able to use public sentiment by Mobilizing The Press to pressure the congressmen to do what they wanted to do. So if you take a look at that and then you bring lbj in and he realized you couldnt deal with just the leaders of the party. He brought them into the white house so they had an individual relationship with him. Joe biden is the kind of person who could do that. They had dinner, theyd go through the mansion, theyd talk and have drinks and then he would call them the next day and never stopped calling them, even called them at 2 00 a. M. Somehow the responsibility of the new president , he may not have that mandate out there, he has to build one, build one through the individual congressman, below the mcconnells, he has to make public sentiment force actions on crisis that we need. Lincoln said with public sentiment, anything is possible. Without is, nothing is possible. So there is movement and they have got to move forward and get that kind of movement from the outside in in order to be able to make a mandate even if its not given to them right now. Stay with us. We have more with this terrific panel. Next up, what happens to donald trump and what happens to the Republican Party . Uums exacty where you need it. Alexa, tell roomba to vacuum in front of the couch. And offers personalized Cleaning Suggestions for a clean unique to you and your home. Roomba and the irobot home app. Only from irobot. Roomba and the irobot home app. I felt gross. It was kind of a shock after i started cosentyx. Four years clear. Real people with psoriasis look and feel better with cosentyx. Dont use if youre allergic to cosentyx. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. Tell your doctor about an infection or symptoms, if your Inflammatory Bowel Disease Symptoms develop or worsen, or if youve had a vaccine or plan to. Serious allergic reactions may occur. Learn more at cosentyx. Com. To syour body needs routine. System, centrum helps your immune defenses every day, with vitamin c, d and zinc. Season, after season. Ace your immune support, with centrum. We are back with an absolute allstar panel of historians, Doris Kearns Goodwins latest book leadership in turbulent time. Jon meachams truth is marching on. John lewis and the power of hope. Niall fergusons most recent, the square and the tower. Niall, let me ask you about the Republican Party. This is why i would persist in saying that the country is polarized. You have now by the latest polls 77 of the Republican Party that believes that this election was fraudulent and joe biden stole it. You have a situation where donald trump is without any question the dominant figure in the Republican Party, even after having lost an election, which seems to me very unusual. So in that context, why is it, in your view, if not for this, you know, rather extreme existential polarization, why are republicans not, you know, acknowledging the results of the election from Mitch Mcconnell down to, as i say, rank and file republicans who overwhelmingly think this was a stolen election . Well, lets remember, fareed, Many Democrats felt that way not only about the 2016 election, but about the 2000 election. So its not like its the first time that the losers have said the election was stolen. Democrats spent four years trying to find evidence that Vladimir Putin was responsible for Donald Trumps election and failed to find it. So i think we shouldnt exaggerate what we are seeing here. I think its important to recognize that trump was an extraordinarily charismatic political leader who was able to hijack the Republican Party in 2016. But he also was able to do it because he articulated policies that were popular, the antiimmigration policy, antifree trade policy, antiliberal elites. He was able to channel a great deal of frustration in middle america. Its not like frustration has gone away. I think youre also right that the democrats made the mistake of becoming the Lockdown Party which allowed trump to campaign as the make the economy great again candidate. But in the end, he lost. I dont Think Trumpism is going to go away. I think the next generation of Republican Leaders are going to have to meet the expectations of that extraordinarily mobilized base that trump has created. But i think, you know, in the end, and ill go back to something that Doris Kearns Goodwin said, i think we can understand this in the context of American History without having to look at Central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Trump is a populist. In many ways, he echoes the populism of the late 19th century. If trump refuses to go away politically, which i suspect he will, it will be a bit like William Jennings brian who was the populist who refused to go away as far as the Democratic Party was concerne