We are delighted to have you here and look forward to your questions. Ofwelcome the College Class 2024. As you begin your journey here at harvard. We wish you all the very best. We hope you engage the institute of politics, attending forums, working with our fellows and the range of programs we have. We welcome you to campus. We look forward to your engagement with the activities of the institute of politics. Tonight, we are fortunate to have four National Reporters who know harvard well and know the institute of politics well. Two graduates of the college. And two former resident fellows. The chief correspondent of the Washington Post, who continues as our senior fellow. We are fortunate with expert moderation to have the three journalists discuss election 2020. It has been an eventful few weeks after the republican and democratic conventions. As we look to the future with the debates, the key states, so a real chance for us to gain their inside perspective and insights into this critical election. This really starts off our election 2020. This will be a big part of the framework for the semester. Next week, we have two important forums, one with andrew yang for his perspective on the race and policy ideas he advanced on tuesday night. On thursday, we will welcome this years fellows at the institute of politics. We will have a former journalist from the New York Times editorial board. Jorge vasquez. We welcome back the former mayor of philadelphia, and alice stewart. It is a great group, they will be here on thursday. Gratitude we , welcome you back to the institute of politics. We wish we were at the forum, but we look for your return to that venue. We are grateful you joined us in this way. Thanks again for moderating. Thank you. Let me add my welcome to everybody. It is great to have everybody on this zoom. We will be all virtual this semester at the institute of politics, but things will be very busy. There is a lot of programming we are in the process of planning. We hope those of you who are not familiar with the iop will check back regularly. Those who are familiar will find your way back in the way you have in the past. We are our focus this year will be the election. So much of our programming content will be built around election 2020. That is the topic tonight. We have been through two unconventional conventions. We are heading into the final 60 days of what is likely to be a tumultuous election. This is being called the most important election in our lifetimes. I think that is said without any real exaggeration. The candidates are out on the campaign trail in a way they havent been, particularly Vice President biden. He was in wisconsin today. The president will be having a rally in pennsylvania shortly after we finish tonight. We will be then very soon beginning early voting in some states. That will accelerate from late september into october. The debates begin september 29. There will be three president ials and one Vice President ial. I believe they end october 22. There is much to talk about tonight. I am thrilled to have the three journalists with me tonight. They are the best in the business. Seasoned political reporters who have covered campaigns with distinction. Margaret from axios. Abby from cnn and alex from the New York Times. I want to start out with what might be an obvious question. I think it is important to set the scene and the tone. I go back to the point i just made that this is the most important election we have gone through. Alex, how do you describe the stakes of this election and how they compare with what we have seen in the past . First, thank you for the introduction. Thanks to all of you for tuning in. It has always been a thrill for me to return to the iop in any fashion. It meant the world to me as an undergrad and it continues to. Whatever i paid for with my senior thesis was entirely worth it. Having said that, this is my third and a half president ial election as a reporter. When i was a freshman and watching my first forum, it was the election between john kerry and george w. Bush. The stakes of that election felt quite high as well. So did the stakes of 2008, which was unfolding in the midst of a Global Economic meltdown. I do think it is important to contextualize it always feels like the stakes are apocalyptic for one reason or another. I do think that we view the candidates themselves and the supporters of the candidates and your average voter talking about the stakes of this election in different terms than in the past because when you listen to the conventions that we just heard, particularly the democratic convention, president obamas speech, none of us in our lifetimes have seen a former president talk about the very survival of democracy being on the ballot. That is the kind of language you hear in other countries that are younger democracies or more historically unstable democracies, not the kind of thing we typically hear in the u. S. Or have heard again in my lifetime, hearing a president talk about attacking the legitimacy of an election the way this president has. The stakes are existential, whichever angle you approach this from. I wonder how much that affects the debate over the next two months. On the one hand, the stakes are immense and, in some respects, greater and more abstract than elections in the past. The survival of democracy is not just a matter of what your tax bill is going to be at the end of the year. At the same time, for most voters, they are grappling with concrete challenges related to the pandemic and economy. For me, for the next few months, trying to figure out the interplay of those two forces, the World Historic stakes of the election and the concrete and in some respects more ordinary stakes of the election, but no less urgent for your average voter. I dont think we have any idea how those forces are going to play out in conflict or intention in tension. The convention, the pandemic was the overriding issue in the campaign and on the minds of people. The president used his convention to drive a law and order message. He has followed that up with lots more talk about law and order and the way he sees cities burning and the consequence of that. To what extent has he been able to change the conversation about this election . How is biden dealing with that . The president has a lot of power to determine what we talk about on a day to day basis. I also think it has been magnified because he has been so active in the midst of the pandemic. He has been traveling. He has been setting this narrative through his actions about what he wants to talk about. It has been an overriding message since george floyd, since lafayette park, when he cleared protesters in order to walk to st. Johns church to hold up a bible in front of it. Weve had a long time to get a sense of how this is working, if it is working at all. Yesterday and today, between the two days, we had an enormous amount of polling. I have been scouring the numbers to see what is going on with the law and order message, voters priorities in terms of what they care about and what they dont. The polling tells the same story. The first is people still think the economy or coronavirus are the top two issues for them. By and large, whether you are looking at National Polling or statebystate polling. When you look at criminal justice and policing you look at , law and order, public safety. I have been a little surprised to see biden is outpolling trump on voters about whether or not they think biden can keep them safe, whether he is better on the issue of law and order. As a political reporter, that is a little surprising to me. I think what we have seen is when President Trump starts to champion an issue, he moves republicans strongly in that direction. He has moved republicans in his direction on law and order, but it has not been enough to overwhelm bidens advantage or overwhelm the other factors. It has been interesting that this message seems to, based on where we are now, im not convinced it is working as well as perhaps the Trump Campaign thinks it is working. On the other hand, it is the dominant narrative. So much so that i think the Trump Campaign successfully pushed the Biden Campaign to go to kenosha in a way that they probably didnt want to have to do. Biden is now having this conversation that trump wants him to have, but he is trying to have it under different terms. There is still time left for these feelings to sink in. I do think the data we have up until this point suggests that this issue is not rising high enough in terms of peoples priorities. I think one of the reasons why is there are other things. The coronavirus and economy go hand in hand. People see the virus as tied to their economic state in the short and longterm. I think it is going to be difficult for the president to overwhelm that by talking about law and order. Especially when the facts are, crime is still at a 25 year low in the United States, even with increases we have seen this year. The idea that somehow the United States is being overrun by crime is not something that people are actually the vast majority of americans are living through. I think that also makes it more difficult for that argument to stick. Dan let me follow up with this question about biden. He doesnt seem he doesnt m to be he does see somewhat buffeted between his very solid base in the africanamerican community. He needs not just big margins, but he needs big turn out. We know there is softness among younger africanamericans, particularly young males. At the same time, he has got to worry about the strong support he has among white women in the suburbs, that that doesnt erode. He is also trying, in those upper midwest states, to get back some of those white midwest voters that have been with the republicans for a while. As you have watched him over the last week, how do you think he is handling that . How do you think he is feeling the pressure of trying to talk to different audiences about the same topic . Sorry, zoom fail. Great question. Hi everyone, welcome back to fall semester. [laughter] i think President Trump i mean joe biden has clearly shifted since the primary and since the conventions in terms of how he is messaging and presenting himself. His career in the senate began in 1972. He prides himself as a slightly left of center centrist. He was the pragmatist who could reach across the aisle. That was out of fashion in the primaries. He had to set it back. Not just for political reasons, but has taken much more of a leaning in position in terms of social justice and reforms in the wake of george floyd and a number of terrible things since the pandemic, including the pandemic and its disproportionate impact on race. Here is where the rubber meets the road in terms of cold, hard politics. It is not a national election. It is an Electoral College election. The demographics shifted the Tipping Point that has already occurred in population centers. Some of the largest states like california and new york are not at that point of wisconsin or pennsylvania. I think we have seen biden in the last few days realized he needs to define himself or be defined by President Trump. When you have President Trump saying things like, you know, that there is people in dark clothing on unidentified aircraft or people dont want to be raped or murdered in their suburban homes, that is something biden has felt like he needs to answer. Threading the needle between saying, i am for treating people equally and giving justice to people that are unfairly targeted, including by law enforcement, but at the same time saying, i am not for violence or violent protests. That is the message he is trying to juggle. It is complicated. You dont want to look like you are flipflopping or trying to make everyone happy. T we are seeing in our ash t we are seeing an hour wee are seeing in our just did a focus group out of wisconsin, not a poll, but what we learned these were predominantly swing voters who had been with barack obama in 2012 and voted for donald trump in 2016. Consistently what we heard from them, almost entirely white voters, one Asian American voter, was they dont like the way the Democratic Party talks about Racial Justice as if people of color are the only ones who get treated poorly by police or dont have systemic advantages. They dont like the rhetoric. If you use the word structural racism, those voters dont accept that is a thing. If you ask the question differently, if you say, is it fair for someone to be shot in the back . They will answer the question differently. Feeling that everyone gets a shot at a better life, it is not just things aimed at people of color and overlooking workingclass whites. It is a complex message. That is what joe biden is having to do in the last two months. Dan alex, there has been a slew of polls that have come out this week. Priorities usa, the democratic super pac, had a briefing yesterday to reporters. One of the points made was this is a durable race, a reasonably stable race. How do you read it at this point, particularly as people are being inundated with polls, what are the cautions you would offer people as they try to interpret this number, this work this states, that state . It is tough. I am as much of a polling junkie as anybody. I like to dig through the specific cross tabs of polls and take it seriously in the moment i am consuming it. Generally, as a consumer of polling information, you should use it to get the Broad Strokes of the race, not the granular details, until we actually know how different counties and municipalities voted and can say more specifically what happened. If you see one poll showing joe biden is leading by 20 points with hispanic voters in texas and another poll showing him leading by 12 points, i would not put that much weight on the difference between them. Similarly, i dont personally find it all that important in doing my job to parse the difference between the polls that show joe biden leading by six points nationally and nine points nationally. The point is he is leading and it is a substantially. It may not be a landslide, but it is substantial lead. Same thing in the swing states. He has a substantial lead nationally and it appears to be a smaller lead in the swing states. Not clear whether it is half as big or three quarters as big, or narrower than that. For a political reporter, it is not all that important to know exactly what the answer to all of those questions is. In terms of parsing the larger picture of the race, it is a pretty stable race. That is why people have a sense it is shifting in a significant way is that we have that set of polls in june and july, including by the New York Times and Washington Post, that show joe biden with an out of this world lead over the president nationally and in swing states. I think everybody at the time thought, this is not going to last. We dont live in a country where people win National Elections by 12 or 13 points. That has not happened in my lifetime and i dont expect it. Crossing my fingers that will be quite a while yet. It is always a more stable race when you have an incumbent president. People have pretty much made up their minds about that person. Doesnt mean they cant change their minds. Part of the reason why folks in the media are focused on voters like the ones margaret is talking about is because they seem like they could change their minds in one direction or the other. There is not a lot of those people left when you had a president for four years, a president like this one who has been so polarizing and has not tried to change peoples minds about him. The question is, what happens on the margins with turnout and participation . Then what happens with the , voters that did change their minds between 2012 and 2016 . Not just the obama to trump voters, but the obama to romney voters, those who participated in the past who did not participate this time. How does joe biden juggle those people . I think this is what we are seeing the president do right now. Is he delivering a message about reassembling the coalition in 2016 and trying to sweep this out again . Right now, we are not hearing or seeing anything from the polling that suggests he is reaching people that were not already pretty open to his message. Can i pop in on this . I concur with everything alex just said. I would add that one of the big differences between this cycle and 2016 is, unlike Hillary Clinton, joe biden is not a candidate who has unfavorability ratings that are as high. Voters do not feel as negatively toward him as they did toward her. I do think there is potentially a dynamic where you have some romney voters who sat out in 2016 or voted third party who come back into the political process. What does that do to the math . I think the math for trump in 2016 was threading a really fine needle. Some of it was obama voters who sat it out, some obama voters who flipped over to him, others who decided to Vote Third Party because they could not stomach him. That is a hard formula to put together again. Now there is this added dynamic that he is no longer running against a uniquely unpopular type of figure. They worked really hard to push up bidens negatives, but it has proven to be difficult task. I think it will continue to be. It is the most important task for the Trump Campaign to drive those negatives on biden up. There is another huge difference between this year and 2016. That is the percentage of ballots that will come in by mail, absentee and early, really could have a huge impact on the count, on legal challenges. This is not a guarantee, it is just a possibility, but there is a possibility that will impact the results to an extent comparable to how turnout affects results. People are voting right now, or they will be in a couple weeks. Obviously, election day has been election day per se for a long time, but we have never seen Something Like what we have seen this cycle where people have to turn in their ballots at a minimum 14 to 15 days before election day for it to count. That is going to be millions of people compared to previous years. Dan lets talk about what that might look like. You did a piece this week about something called the red mirage, which is what Election Night and days after might look like. Could you talk about what that is . Then lets go broader than that about the contentiousness of this entire election and what may be instore as we get to election day and after. The red mirage is a super provocative term coined by a democratic Strategy Firm that Michael Bloomberg founded. That is the disclosure there. These are democratic strategists trying to get joe biden elected. What they did is they built this complex model that took into account six weeks worth of polling of 17,000 people, a bunch of polling averages from 538, Historical Data on ballot rejection rates in different states that vote by mail, and what we know to be true consistently from all polling, that democrats are more afraid of catching or spreading coronavirus than republicans are in this country. In part because of that, as a result, we are seeing Democrats Ask at much higher percentages for absentee ballots this year. The expectation is that disproportionately, the vote by mail will comprise democrats and disproportionately voters who vote at the polls on election day will be republicans. What does that mean . Potentially what it means is if you were to take a snapshot of the votes on Election Night, it would disproportionately favor donald trump. If you were to see that on a map, it would look red. It would not be as red as it looked, therefore it would be a mirage. In the days that followed were potentially weeks that map would , get bluer and bluer as vote by mail ballots are counted. That model goes from trump red on Election Night to biden blue after a few days. I have no idea if that is what it is going to look like, nor do we know for a fact Election Night will favor donald trump. It is a theory if florida were to be a runaway state for joe biden and other states that we would know on Election Night where joe biden stands or have a clearer picture. We dont know. We do know is that theres consensus that between Election Night and whatever day the race is decided will be a powder keg of tensions and challenges from both parties to try to maximize their standing and minimize their competitors standing. What democrats are concerned about is that the president , who controls so many levers, that he will apply intense pressure on elected or party officials. Everyone from secretaries of state or judges to find in his favor. Again it is speculative. ,i have talked to many republicans who hate this theory. They think it is democrats trying to gaslight trump and delegitimize a win if he wins. I have talked to liberal democrats who hate this idea. They think that its waving a white flag of surrender before the election happens. As i see it, it is neither. Its an attempt to look systemically at what the data tells us about how coronavirus and mailin balloting has set certain trends in motion that we have never grappled with before. It makes the election in 2000, which came down to one county in one state, look like a warm up to what we could see. Putting aside the reasons why people on all sides hate this story, to what extent do you worry about a chaotic finish to this election and worse division, no matter who wins, than the runup up to the election . I guess im not sure worry is the term. I think that is almost certain to happen, right . Worry indicates uncertainty. I dont have much of that. I find it very concerning for the country that the great likelihood is that the election will be followed by disorder of some scale. If biden ends up winning convincingly im sorry if you hear ambient noise. I have a dog thats getting agitated. [laughter] if he wins by some convincing margin, im not talking 10 points, if he wins by five points, which is not a historical margin for someone to get, obama got a four point margin in 2012, which we think of as a close race, maybe it is simpler than all of this. People spend a lot of time i understand why speculating about what will happen if the president refuses to accept the results of the election. We ought to spend not as much time but plenty of time thinking about what happens if it goes the other way and joe biden wins the popular vote by a decent margin but the president wins in a couple midwestern states by a minuscule margin of victory and once again, have the majority of beinguntry or a plurality asked to accept being governed for another four years by somebody who most people did not vote for. For that outcome to happen, a couple months after what was probably the largest mass protest movement in american history, is not hard to imagine a Trump Victory being followed by a scale of Public Resistance that would work. I do want to say i did not hate , margarets story. I think one thing, from my own experience with the bloomberg data, his folks can get very committed to one specific scenario. Very convincing about one specific scenario. I think that people have a way of getting locked into i remember very well, i guess this was early november, being told by bloomberg people that they had run the numbers and if he didnt do the selfsacrificing self advertising thing of running for president , the party would have nominated elizabeth moran, maybe elizabeth w arren, maybe bernie sanders. We dont know if he were right. He did the heisenbergian, to participate in the phenomenon is to change it. Margaret is right. This is one scenario we should think about. Its not the only scenario. There is so much uncertainty about how mailin voting will play out and how turnout in general will play out. It is something well have to keep in mind and honestly. Be humble about the conclusions we start to drop on Election Night. The bloomberg theory worked until bloomberg met Elizabeth Warren on the debate stage. Things changed slightly for his prospects. Thank you all. I will now move to the questions from our audience. I will tee them up one by one. The first one is from nina. Hi, everyone. Thanks for talking today. I wanted to ask you all to touch on a part of this election process that could be consequential. The debates between biden and trump as well as between harris and pence. I wanted to see what you all think in terms of the impact that the debates could have on the election outcome. Do you think it will be significant . Do you think the way that trump debates and the fact that nancy pelosi likened it to skulduggery will impact bidens ability to fend off trumps attack as well as change the Public Perception of how adept or skillful biden is at being able to stave off somebody who is known for being very aggressive in his manner of speaking . Do you want to try that one . Thats a great question. I do think the debates will matter. Particularly the first one. As we have been talking about, people will start voting very quickly come october. You will see a lot of people making up their minds. In some of the polling, nine out of 10 people are certain where they will go. The window of opportunity for these candidates to change minds is very narrow this year compared to past years. The dynamics of a debate with trump are always very tricky. If you remember, back in 2016, it seemed as though Hillary Clinton won the debates against trump. Ultimately, it didnt really change the outcome the way she wouldve liked. I think we should be cautious. Being perceived by the media, even by the public, as winning the debate doesnt necessarily mean that people wont vote for President Trump. I think that so many of the narratives that the Trump Campaign are trying to establish about joe biden really require them to be facetoface with him. One of them is what we talked about, the crime and justice, law and order message. That has been hard for the Trump Campaign to prosecute because they havent had a lot of engagement from the biden side. I think when they have that engagement, they will feel like they have an opportunity to make their case more clearly. The other big thing will be stamina. It has been beyond me why the Trump Campaign wants to push on this issue of bidens mental acuity and stamina or what have to have if they want that debate not debate, but if they want to have that conversation, the debate stage will be a key place for that to be on display for the american public. I dont know what people are going to see in terms of whether they think that one 70 somethingyearold has the stamina to be president. It will be a big part of that narrative. As far as pelosi is concerned, i kind of read her comments as an attempt to troll President Trump into debating by saying that, you know, biden should not debate trump. I dont think the Biden Campaign found that to be helpful. They dont necessarily agree. I think it was aimed at getting under the skin of the Trump Campaign because President Trump, now they are arguing for more debates sooner, summer months ago, they were making the case that the debates were going to be unfair regardless of when they were held. They were complaining about the debate moderators. They were complaining about the format. It seemed he was saying explicitly that he would consider not attending debates. It has been the president that has been questioning the value of debates. Now, it looks likely that they will happen. The first will be the most important. Really people are voting. , there will be early voting and mailin voting. Once those ballots are cast, in most cases, thats it. In some cases, you can change it. In most cases, thats the end of the story. Thank you. Next up is jessica. Hi, everyone. My name jessica. Is jessica. Im calling from arkansas. Im a junior at the college. My question was in regards to something that was mentioned before. Some of the top two issues have been the economy and covid. And so, what do you guys think the impact a vaccine will have on the election . Especially with how it has been politicized with the cdc releasing that announcement of vaccines coming out november 1. What do you guys think about that . Margaret, do you want to take that . Sure. President trump is clearly trying to send a message that coronavirus is basically over with now. And that a vaccine is weeks away and everyone will be fine. Hes doing that explicitly. Anditerally what he says, hes doing it more intuitively by doing these large events were where people are sitting next to each other, not wearing masks. He is trying to pivot to a crime message and away from the virus. Message. The latest push and pressure to get at least an infrastructure for vaccine delivery out there before november 3, tossing the rhetorical possibility that it would be by novembe availably november 30 the cherry on top. Do you think we will be lining up on halloween to get covid vaccines . I dont. I am not a scientist. The strategy behind that is obvious. I just exhausted my knowledge on the subject. I will yield to alex. Alex what do you think . , i dont have much more knowledge of the science of Vaccine Development than anybody else on this panel. I think margaret is right. One of the things we have seen consistently throughout covid is the covid experience, if you want to call at that, is that is that when the president starts to recommend something or promote a certain kind of policy, the public moves against it. Theres a very low level of trust in his judgment and in his honesty on the subject. The last time we did polling the , share of people who said that they thought the president was a reliable source of information on the coronavirus was substantially lower. I dont remember the exact numbers. There were people who are voting for him who said they did not see him as a trustworthy source of information on the coronavirus. I say all this by way of, if the president were to say on november 1, head to cvs and take the vaccine, a lot of people would take that as a blinking yellow light. Maybe dont go do the vaccine just yet. Thats potentially an enormous Public Health challenge. Either for the Trump Administration if he is reelected or a Biden Administration who comes in to office with this shadow of doubt having already been cast over whether the vaccine the government is asking people to take really got the testing that people expect for the vaccine. Go ahead. Not to belabor this. I cant emphasize enough how we should not assume that a vaccine being available around the election or before the election would benefit the president. To alexs confidence in vaccines point, has been going down, not up. Confidence in the president s handling of coronavirus is also going down. I do wonder if Something Like that could really become something that signals to a lot of voters that theres undue political influence and drive actually drive them to continue to view the president s handling of the crisis as insufficient. The idea of a virus being ready before people have trust in it , that it is safe and effective could backfire in a way that is , unpredictable in this cycle. It should not be assumed that that is automatically a good thing for the president. Hes not in a good place in terms of handling the crisis. You will start to see a lot of democrats doubting, i think, the value of a vaccine. I almost feel like the Public Health community should come out like thea rule almost fbi was supposed to have a rule about doing investigations within 14 days of an election. I dont know that theres any benefit to doing anything dramatic when it comes to Something Like a vaccine just before an intense political cycle because the impact of that is going to be very unpredictable. It may not benefit the president. It could have serious longterm consequences. For Public Health. Theres a timing variable for this. Maybe this is a point for the audience today. The return of school, both at the grade school level and at the university level. For the universities attempting to do it in person. Or partly in person. Because of the coincidence of timing, school going back around labor day and taking a while to see who is sick and if and how it will spread. We have the potential for some volatility in case rates and infection rates in the coming weeks. Nobody wants that. I dont. As much as i enjoy thinking about political modeling, that is not a model i want to be thinking about. But it is a fact. There are two trends between now and election day that could have an impact on how people vote. One is the virus and how it impacts americans. The other is the economy and whether it moves up or down or stays the same in the weeks to come. Just a quick point. To alexs point, i think our last poll on trust on the president on the issue of coronavirus, i think 64 said they did not trust things he had to say. Next, we will hear from victor. Hello. My name is victor. Im a sophomore. Im currently zooming in from lake tahoe, california. So my question is for abby. But i would love to hear from the other panelists as well. Seeing as you have covered instances of Mass American tragedy before, both in charleston and san bernardino, we saw a recently in the middle recently in the middle of the republican convention, the shooting that took place in kenosha, wisconsin. Im curious to have your take on that. Especially seeing as this was committed by a 17yearold who appears to have taken this rhetoric that we already discussed of law and order by the Trump Administration to heart. He has been photographed in the front rows of a lot of his rallies. My question is do you think that , this is going to shape some of the conversations of the dynamic moving forward . For alex, who has covered the Trump Campaign before, do you feel as though this is something that will warrant an address in pivotay or a potential within the Trump Campaign for how they will address law and order moving forward . Hey, victor. First of all im very jealous , that you are in tahoe. I wish i were there. I do think last week, it was so surreal, honestly. To be in a studio covering the Republican National convention as kenosha was becoming this incredible tinderbox. Two people had just been shot and killed. We were learning about who was responsible for it. And just watching, frankly, the lack of acknowledgment at the convention about those events that had occurred. Right now, i think the Trump Campaign strategy is to ignore it for the time being. In conservative circles, this young 17yearold who shot and killed two people and injured a third is becoming a sort of hero extraordinary. S i think, lets put it this way. I do think, inasmuch as reporters felt they missed the story of 2016, these voters who were so dissatisfied with the system that they went over to the trump side. I do think that we need to be careful that we dont over extrapolate from that. What happened last week in there is what happened last week in kenosha, theres what happened over the last couple of days in portland where a group of armed individuals, many of them supporters of the president , were shooting paintballs at protesters. One person was killed. Theres a dynamic of conflict that is unfolding in the se situations between the president s supporters and protesters. Its a question to me whether that actually in fact plays positively into a law and order message. I think the president s campaign, i think they think that they can simply recast it and ignore the death and recast it as just a symptom of anarchy in democratic led cities. I think the American People are going to be more discerning than that. They see whats going on. The reality of that situation is conflict. So i do think that that dynamic is a tinderbox that will get worse. I dont think its going to play in the way that maybe the Trump Campaign thinks it will play. The reality is, this is happening right now. Americans have consistently viewed the president as an instigator of racial tensions. , an instigator of a certain type of chaos and division in the country. I dont necessarily see any reason to believe that somehow three months before an election, that is going to change. Suddenly americans will think hes going to bring the entire country together. It just doesnt pass the smell test. I think these conflicts, its a big deal that people are getting killed on the streets. In conflict with one another. I think weve become numb to it. But it is a big deal. I think americans recognize that. I think its going to have an impact one way or another. The president says this is evidence that on american streets democratic leadership is failing. I think Many Americans actually do not think that he is helping in terms of bringing the temperature down, bringing the rhetoric down, calling his supporters off, discouraging people from showing up in the streets armed. I dont think we should somehow think that the public is not able to discern reality from fiction based on what they are seeing happening on the news every single day. Alex do you want to pick up on the other part of victors question . Sure. Where the Trump Campaign is concerned, the president doesnt backtrack on his support for people who he sees as on his side. I would not expect to see some big pivot about the shooting in kenosha or the law and order rhetoric generally. This has been an extremely consistent feature from the start of his candidacy to the extent that the American People are worried that the president uses the language of incitement, it is not a concern of the haspresident himself acknowledged or allowed to shape his behavior. I do think in the world of republican politics more generally, outside of the trunk Trump Campaign or even within the Trump Campaign, people recognize that their messenger is who we is. You can only do so much to change him. They are cognizant of the limits of his appeal. There is absolutely a recognition that this is a country that has historically responded to a message of law and order. Its not a country that has historically responded in favor favorably to what they see as extremism of any kind. So thats the danger in the approach that the president is taking. Hes trying to talk to a combination of his own hardcore base to get them fired up and we reconsolidated after a really politically rough season for him. But hes also trying to talk to voters who dont support him already. If he can persuade some share of moderate or centerright voters in the suburbs that this is an election in choice between your neighborhood being safe with donald trump or being burned down with joe biden, he can shave off enough of those votes to win the Electoral College. It is the choice that he ends up the choice that joe biden convinces the country is before them is a choice between street warfare with the president on one side and bring the country together or lowering the temperature overall, i dont think thats a debate republicans think they can win. We will see how far the president goes in that direction, whether he goes far enough that anybody else in his party says, you know what . You need to knock it off. Our last question will come from alex chan. Hi. Thank you so much for coming today. My name is alex. Im a sophomore. Im zooming in from new york. I guess my question for you is, if you think there is a secret trump vote that the polling is not picking up. People who might not want to admit to a pollster that they support donald trump and how this will affect the elections. If it will. Who wants that one . I will just answer it really quickly. I dont believe that theres any evidence that there is a shy trump vote at this point. I think that you could make the case that there were social dynamics at play in 2016 that made that some kind of factor. But right now, i think you are getting this weird mix of arguments. That Trump Supporters are far more enthusiastic than joe biden supporters, far more likely to show up. So enthusiastic that they support the president in the race and they are uncomfortable saying they support the president. I dont think that thats really a coherent theory of the trump electorate. I think its a different thing to say at this point that you are for or against the incumbent president of the United States. Then to say 4 years ago, when he was seen as an underdog and such a far out candidate in a lot of ways that you were actually going to vote for him. Its absolutely possible that there are people out there who do not admit to a pollster that they are going to support the president. I just dont think we have evidence to think thats a larger share than the number of people who just dont answer the phone when they call or who may be dont want to say they support joe biden because they are in a historically conservative community where they are surrounded by trump signs. I think we have to watch that space with some degree of skepticism. I think the real phenomenon there that is watching his differential nonresponse and in polling. When one party gets depressed, sometimes their voters just answer the phone less or are less inclined to take an opinion poll. If you see joe bidens lead open up again to 13 or 14 points or if you see it narrowed down really abruptly and in response, to it is not clear what forces, that might be a real shift in the race. Wait to see that it holds up over time before assuming that it is something permanent and not just people who have seen the president or his challenger do something that embarrasses and demoralizes them and makes them feel like i actually dont want to talk to somebody from the Washington Post or New York Times or cnn about this. Go ahead. If it came down to the exact same stakes that it did last time, you dont have to call them a secret trump vote. You can just call it people who were genuinely, mostly white voters, who were genuinely undecided about whether they should be more worried about coronavirus or crime. Trump caught their attention. Maybe Kamala Harris seems like an unknown quantity to him. They are worried about trumps messaging. All that stuff could be causing enough uncertainty that even if they are not secret trump fans, that they could just be people trying to make up their minds. I will say this. I know we dont have time to delve into it. Maybe we can do it in another zoom. Another school of thought that says it will not be the same map as it was in 2016 and that there are places like arizona or , wow, florida which would be total Game Changers and change the dynamic. I would never predict what will happen two months out. But those are some of the reasons why its hard to predict it. Thank you all. I want to close with the a question for each of you. Ccinctly ass su you can. For all the students who are tuned in tonight and are thinking about either a path into politics or a path into our profession, journalism, what should they be thinking about . What advice would you give them . I wont say what advice would you give them necessarily, but what should they be thinking about as they look with some interest in either of those paths once they finish up at harvard . Abby, do you want to go first . And then we will do alex and end with margaret. Yeah. There are a lot of things you can do. I think that one thing that turns a lot of people off from pursuing politics as a career or political journalism as a career is feeling like you dont have interest in the horse race or the kind of who is up, who is down. I think for those people i would strongly encourage you to persist because i think increasingly journalism, political journalism needs to be reliant on people who are strong analytical observers of the public and of public opinion. Butjust through polling, also people with experiences and perspectives, because right now, i think we are still living through a political realignment that causes some of the data relied upon in the political world to be a little less useful to us. To the extent that you can spend your time thinking, how can you listen more to what voters have to say and how can you try to understand more where people are coming from on both sides of the issue and the complexity and idiosyncrasies of voters, people do not vote in a linear fashion. They have opinions that take them in a different direction. Understanding how that works, it is a listening exercise more than a prediction exercise, and i think that i would really urge you to spend more time reading those kinds of stories that give you a window into peoples thoughts and thought processes as much as you spend time reading about polls or political strategy, which i think a lot of times these days relies on flawed habits from old cycles that may not actually even be relevant in the realignment we are living through right now. Alex . I agree with everything abby said. I would just say three things real fast. One is that i think it is very useful in politics or covering politics to have some engagement with a discipline other than politics. To have a grounding in some craft or expertise that is not truly political, and that can be literature, statistics chemistry, but i would take some , time to ground yourself outside of this one world in addition to working in this one world. The second thing is that if you do feel the pull of Public Service or political activity or journalism, do not let your friends or family or recruiter talk you out of it just because it is safer to go in a different direction. I took my first job out of college as a Research Assistant with politico. I was told by some people that politico would not exist in a year, and i was told by other people that it would be safer to go into consulting or banking. Investment banking. Three months later the financial , sector completely collapsed, so my bet turned out to be the safer one, at least in the short term. The last thing is that if there are people who are watching poor who are students who are interested in going into journalism, feel free to reach out to me directly. I would be happy to be a resource to you. I benefited enormously as a student from mentors who helped me figure out my path into this field. It is really hard to figure out sometimes what the right angle of approach is and i think some , of us have benefited from mentors in the past. It is enormously important to for us to pay it forward. Me and i am for sure abby. I hope anyone would reach out to my email with any questions. I guess my advice would be, have the courage of your convictions. Listen more than you talk. Listen first. I think you need to think about, when you are deciding between the two, i think you need to think about whether you have strong partisan leanings or activist leanings that would compel you to take action, or if you are more interested in being a referee in the process. That will probably determine which of the two directions you initially going into, but i will also say that if you go into politics first, or if you go into consulting or Investment Banking first, there is still a place for you in journalism. It may not be as a mainstream news reporter. Hosty be a columnist or a of some kind a convener, but , some of the most interesting and smartest people in the journalist world beyond reporters are people from either party or no party at all, people who actually know something about the field that they are speaking in because they have worked in it. They can be very effective communicators and arbiters of discussion. It has been a great pleasure to spend an hour with you guys tonight and i hope you stay in , touch. Thank you, all three. Dan, are you going to answer the question . I will briefly answer it. Alex, i think your point about grounding in some discipline is vitally important. The one that you did not mention that i would focus on is history. A reading of history and a consistent reading of history will hold you in good stead. This is a rapidly changing country, as we all know. It is obviously a divided country. Our politics reflect those changes, rather than vice versa, and anybody who has an inkling of going into politics, this is a vitally important time for people of goodwill and good sensibility and the right values to get into the political arena in some way or another. There is a lot about political campaigns that turns people off, but there is something vitally important about the debates that go along with an election that shapes the future of the country. For those of you who have some interest in the activist side, think of it in all the good ways, not in the destructive ways we sometimes see. For people who want to understand what is going on, journalism is a great place for from which to practice in. We have the opportunity, the old cliche, we write the rough first draft of history. We do get an opportunity to try to write the story of america as it is unfolding. And this moment in our history is so rich in so many ways that if you have any inkling of interest in doing that, i urge you to do it. As everybody said, i am certainly available for anybody who wants to tap into my background or my thoughts or advice or whatever. My best email, i would welcome you. Margaret, abby, alex, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time tonight. This was a great conversation. Remember for all of you tuned in, there are two forums next week. I hope many of you will be able to join us for one or both of those. With that, thank you very much and good night. Thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] eventsday, a campaign with President Trump at the winstonsalem, north carolina, airport. Live coverage begins at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. 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