Eye on the Triangle

Emilia Rivadeneira 0:00
The views and opinions expressed during Eye on the Triangle do not represent WKNC or NC State Student Media (instrumental begins).

Your dial is currently tuned to Eye on the Triangle on WKNC 88.1 FM, HD-1. Thanks for listening (instrumental continues).

Good morning everyone (instrumental fades). Hope you're enjoying your day. My name is Emilia Rivadeneira, host of Eye on the Triangle, and with further ado, let's get into some news (instrumental resumes).

(instrumental fades) Hello and welcome to WKNC's Eye on the Triangle, your source of local news, where we dive deep into the pressing issues affecting our communities. I'm your host, Emilia Rivadeneira, and today we have a very special guest joining us, Andrew Taylor, professor of political science in the School of Public and International Affairs at NC State University. Thank you so much for being here today.

Andrew Taylor 1:12
Thanks for having me, Emilia.

Emilia Rivadeneira 1:13
How are you doing?

Andrew Taylor 1:14
Pretty good. Pretty well, yeah,

Emilia Rivadeneira 1:16
Perfect. So let's just dive in. While students have enjoyed the summer break, I know that politics has been anything but on-pause. So over the past few months, we have had like a whirlwind of significant political events that are shaping the 2024 election landscape, from the unprecedented conviction of a former president on felony charges to President Biden's withdrawal from the race, and even an assassination attempt on live-television involving Trump. This summer has been a period of intense political upheaval, so yeah, that's why we're here today. Kind of like to touch base on some of those events. But before we kind of dive deep on those, I wanted to ask you to like- let's just like, take a closer look at each candidate, former President Donald Trump for the Republican Party and Vice president Kamala Harris for the Democratic Party. Could you kind of summarize key policy positions for both candidates and highlight their main viewpoints on critical issues.

Andrew Taylor 2:27
Yeah, well, we'll get back to all the drama of the summer, you had said Emilia was pretty an eventful summer. But with regards to the sort of basic policy positions of the two candidates, obviously, in Trump's case, we have a four-year presidential term to look back at, to be able to see, you know what he might do in another four-year term. And I think one of the most interesting things about Trump, of course, is that he really has changed the sort of Republican Party orthodoxy on some principal issues. Here I'm sort of talking his substantive policy positions rather than his style. We'll talk a little bit about his style in a minute. But, so the Republican Party had traditionally been, really, up until the mid-1990s very pro-immigration, and then sort of, you know, a little bit wavering on it. But Trump has clearly turned the party into one that has been a kind of anti-immigration party, and, interestingly enough, probably teased out more pro-immigration positions in the Democrats than we are used to from the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party actually used to be the party that was was anti-immigration, and similarly on trade, the Republican Party had been a party of free trade, and now it clearly is not. Trump is heavily protectionist, and again, to a certain extent, the Democrats have followed the Republicans in this. There are Democrats are probably more protectionist or anti-free trade than they were in the 1990s and 2000s. So those are two big issues.

On other issues, Trump sort of is portraying himself, I think, more as a kind of candidate for the working class, more than Republicans have traditionally. He's not interested, for example, in any kind of meaningful reform to programs like Social Security and Medicare that Republicans were looking at trying to save some money on, since they consume such a huge part of the federal budget. He's not going to do that. He's had some interesting positions on foreign policy, particularly sort of his outreach to North Korea during his first term. He portrays himself as very strongly anti-China. And then with regards to regulations, he's been very anti-regulation, which is a bit more like the Republican orthodoxy. Trying to peel back a lot of federal regulations, particularly in the economic arena. With style, of course, Trump's style is unique. It's abrasive, it's loud, it's strange, because I don't think it's always consistent, and he really has, of course, shaken up American politics. He is very, very different from the past. We've always had candidates who have been partisan, but not candidates who have been quite so aggressively, I often- abusive to opponents and certain segments the American society. Social media, of course, he's sort of come up in the era of social media, I think has accentuated that and Trump have exploited social media effectively over the past eight or nine years, but he has little regard for convention and tradition. He talks badly about traditional institutions, and, as I said, incredibly abrasive. And you know, this has got him into a lot of controversy, and he has, by many quarters considered that, you know, he's made racist remarks or sexist remarks or what have you. So stylistically, obviously, is very different. With regards to the Vice President, who is now his opponent, which is part of the drama of the summer. She's, in many ways, not a conventional, a conventional Democrat, but in some ways a change. Obviously, her candidacy is historic. She's not the first woman to be a major party candidate for president. That was Hillary Clinton, 2016 but she's the first minority woman vice president Harris is half black. Father's Black is from Jamaica. Her parents are both immigrants, and her mother's from India. She's kind of a traditional, modern Democrat, pretty liberal on economic and social and cultural issues, but maybe to the left of President Biden on those social and cultural issues, I think in terms of economic issues, you're not going to really see very much difference between if we do get a president Harris from the Biden term, she's not going to mess around too much with tax policy. She's going to push regulations, particularly in the area of an environment. She's going to try as much as possible to increase growth by helping out people towards the bottom end of the socioeconomic spectrum. And you know, there may be a variety of different ways to do that, but I think on the culture issues, you probably put more of an emphasis on that. Some of that is purely because of who she is, compared to Biden demographically, but I think some of it is a style. She's a prosecutor. When she was attorney general in California, she was very interested in issues like the environment, like the rights of and interests of women and minorities, LGBT community and that kind of stuff. And I think you might see an emphasis on that, a sort of more modern kind of Democrat than than we think President Biden is. So I don't know if that was a nutshell. It's probably longer than that, but that's kind of where we are with those two candidates. Two candidates. Yeah,

Emilia Rivadeneira 8:43
And that is kind of like the reason why I wanted to start like this, because I know that Harris is kind of, like, taking a cautious approach into like, on, like, revealing a policy vision in, in her own and so that's kind of like, you know, I wanted to touch base on like that in a nutshell.

Andrew Taylor 9:04
Yeah, yeah. I mean, certainly cautious. Of course, we're recording this right before the beginning of the semester and right before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention, which starts on August 19, same as first day classes. And today, you know, Vice President Harris has only been the presumptive nominee for three weeks, roughly. Today, she really hasn't done much media. She hasn't done really any interviews. I think that's strategically savvy. She does seem to have had a bounce, and her numbers are a bit better than President Biden's against former President Trump, and so, you know, she's kept some of her cards close to her chest, which, as I said, I think that makes sense, and ride the wave, but she won't be able to do that for too long. She's going to at the convention, obviously, have an acceptance speech that should be revalatory of what she wants to do. As president, and then we'll have a real full on campaign as we move into the form.

Emilia Rivadeneira 10:04
Yeah, for sure. And so kind of moving on to, like, those key political events, like, like the drama that happened in the summer, there's just, like so much that it's even just hard to comprehend everything that we have witnessed, um, and so I wanted to start, um, just June 27 2024 um, the presidential debate, which was with Joe Biden, and not the current, you know, candidate, um, what were your key takeaways from this debate?

Andrew Taylor 10:42
Well, I don't think Democrats, you know, Democrats try to dress it up, but I don't think you know, they did so very persuasively. It's clear that it was an unmitigated disaster for the President. You know, we were kind of used to these sort of very strange debates between Biden and Trump from 2020 and to be fair to both candidates, some of that was because of covid. So there wasn't an audience. You can't, you know, it's very weird, sort of having a debate with no one there. There's no electricity in the room. But this, this debate at the end of June, by the way, unique debate created outside of the scope of the there's a Bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates that generally governs these things. The candidates decided to move outside of that mechanism and do their own debate. But it was a disaster from the beginning, President Biden was halting. He seemed to misspeak. He seemed to not be able to sort of articulate himself very well. And afterwards, there was this kind of, the Democrats were pulled in two ways. One was, as I said, they tried to defend the president and say, you know, it was a tie, or Trump was terrible as well. But then they also, many of them pounced on the Biden in a circle and said, you know, you told us it was okay, and we were led to believe it was okay. And clearly this is demonstrative of the fact that it isn't. And that set into motion a roughly three week period where, you know, this sounds, it sounds like a mean analogy, but I said, you know, he's dead man walking. I just didn't see how he could turn it around. And it was just a question of, of how the, the standing down would take place. I think democratic royalty sort of decided, you know we've got to move on, but let's try to allow the president some dignity and some time and space to make that come to that decision on his own, which, of course, ultimately, he did. And so yeah, that was a incredibly powerful moment in recent American political history, because it's the first time it's happened, really, since 1968 when Lyndon Johnson stepped down. But that was earlier in the cycle, in at the end of March. You know, here we were with a president, presidential candidate, sitting president, who had sewn up his party's nomination without question, deciding he didn't want.

Emilia Rivadeneira 13:21
Yeah, for sure. And kind of like, in a subsequent question was the, how did this debate kind of shape all of the events that happened afterwards? And, like, was this a catalyst to Biden's withdrawal?

Andrew Taylor 13:38
Oh, yeah, there's no doubt about it. I think, I think the President and the inner circle, those around him, including members of the Biden family, particularly his wife, Jill Biden, who still believed that, you know one, he could do it. And I think by he could do it, not only win the election, but serve as an effective president for another four years afterwards. And secondly, that he was the best position Democrat, and in fact, particularly, you know, maybe, maybe not by the time we got to the summer, certainly not after the debate, but in the winter and spring, you know, when you saw those hypothetical head to heads between, you know, Biden and Trump and Harrison Trump, or some other democrat and Trump, maybe Governor Gavin Newsom of California, for example, Biden did the best, and so it did make sense. But after that debate, it was all it was completely changed.

Emilia Rivadeneira 14:41
Now let's talk about the, Trump's conviction. Um, which was,

Andrew Taylor 14:47
Which came first, right? Yes. So, I mean, yeah, it's hard to keep track, right? It's a crazy summer, yeah? So sorry, yes, go ahead Emeila,

Emilia Rivadeneira 14:56
I was just gonna say that over the summer, kind of like. To give a little bit of context to our audience, Trump was convicted in the first of four criminal trials he's facing after the New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business record.

Andrew Taylor 15:13
Yep.

Emilia Rivadeneira 15:15
So yeah, as a convicted felon, Trump is not prevented from continuing to campaign for president, right? Since the Constitution does not prohibit candidates from running for president, even if they are convicted of a crime. So what are just general thoughts on this?

Andrew Taylor 15:33
Yeah, I mean, it seems to have been buried now with all the other things that have been going on. So this is unprecedented, both, really both for an former president and for a major party presidential nominee. So this, for the listeners, you sort of describe the technicalities of the convictions. But of course, this is has to do with the whole Stormy Daniels thing. So President, former President Trump, had a relationship, sexual relationship. He denies it. She said it happened with porn star stage named Stormy Daniels, and then basically paid hush money to her through some, often through, well, really, through an intermediary, but it was paid by Trump to kill the story, because, although the relationship happened a while ago, she sort of said, you know, during the 2016 campaign, this could be really useful, interesting information with the American public, and so it's found guilty of that interesting not enough, not as initially, your prosecutor's going after sort of campaign finance violation, but they said on this sort of New York law about force of own business records, basically, sort of saying, you know, you're using money for purposes other than what you've reported, and it were 34 counts. I mean, the differences between some of the counts were minuscule, but that sounds like a lot, and it is a lot, but, I mean, some of the difference, but it was interesting that it was all 34 counts that the jury found him guilty. And so initially, if you look at the polls, it didn't really have to make too much of an effect that there were a lot of surveys done before this that said, you know, if people who were kind of Trump would support Trump or lean Trump if he's convicted of a felony, what do you think that there was this sort of sense that he might lose some of that support, but it wasn't really clear afterwards that that was the case. And so this is, you know, this is part of the backdrop to the campaign, and it's historic.

Emilia Rivadeneira 17:48
Yeah, and so has this legal outcome kind of like influenced Trump's base. I know that you kind of touch on that, but just in general, like his overall campaign strategy.

Andrew Taylor 18:02
not at all, really. I mean, to a certain extent, it plays on this idea that he's a kind of victim, and the sort of, the the the national establishment are out to get him, you know, and this, this is consistent with this story, so it sort of helps to a large extent with that, of course, we should also mention that the Supreme Court heard a case that effectively had to do with presidential immunity from prosecution, that the court has effectively said that presidents engaging in activities that are central to their core constitutional responsibilities are immune from prosecution. This doesn't really have a direct effect on the case we were just talking about, but there are, you mentioned, four criminal cases. There are three other criminal cases, yeah, which have been kind of, to a certain extent, I wouldn't say, derailed, but certainly delayed by this Supreme Court ruling over the summer as well. And with that, you know, Trump has said, I'm vin-, you know, I'm vindicated by certain things. I'm, excuse me, I'm vindicated by the court's ruling. And, you know, these other charges are unfair and should be thrown away. So it's interesting. He whatever, regardless of the of the events, I think Trump has a story. They fit into a theory has of politics and those people who are particularly supportive of Trump, that only makes them say, Well, see, you know, I'm right. I should, I should support Trump,

Emilia Rivadeneira 19:53
And I'm glad that you mentioned, or, like, bring up the Supreme Court ruling, because I know that in the public perception, there has been a lot of like turmoil about the decision itself. And so how does this ruling change, kind of the dynamics of the 2024 race, more specifically for President Trump. You touch a little bit on that, but

Andrew Taylor 20:18
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it changed the dynamics of the race, I think it certainly has an effect on those other cases that you were talking about, particularly the January 6 case, the presidential records case, the classified documents case, I should say, is probably pretty dead anyway, you might remember that actually there was charges, or there was an independent counsel looking into President Biden's use of or misuse of classified documents, and that was the undertaken by a guy called Robert Hur, which really hurt Biden, because Hur's report said, you know, well, it was innocuous, you know, him keeping those classified documents. It was just the, I'm not quoting this exactly correctly, but it was the actions of a sort of well intentioned, sort of old, muddled man or something like that. But you know, if those were done, if those decisions were done as president and are central to core constitutional duties. Then, as courts, Supreme Court, there really isn't going to be a case there for President Trump or in future, but with so, not really, with regard more with the cases, the legal cases in the campaign. I think if there is one thing with the campaign, it helps the Democrats a little bit. The Democrat story, which is, you know, Trump is a menace to democracy, is he threatens American democracy. And you know now the Supreme Court has an interpretation of presidential power that is a little bit different from the past, and provides the ability for someone in the office to, you know, do things with disregard to constraints placed on it by placed on the person, by the Constitution, by the courts, by Congress. If we put Trump back in, it's going to be even worse. So to a certain extent, as far as the campaign is concerned, rather than the legal cases we've been talking about that might help the Democrats make that argument a bit better.

Emilia Rivadeneira 22:28
Yeah, and now that we're on the topic of former President Donald Trump, another major key event, July 13, 2024 former President Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally.

Andrew Taylor 22:49
Yeah.

Emilia Rivadeneira 22:49
So how the assassination attempt against Trump impacts the election in a broader sense?

Andrew Taylor 22:56
Yeah, again, I'm not sure you know there was a little blip up in the poll afterwards. You know, historically, we've seen these kinds of things. I mean, the last serious- well, of course, Trump isn't a sitting president, but he's a former president, major party presidential candidate, perhaps the most recent close analog was the assassination attempt on President Reagan in at the end of March in 1981 and Reagan's approval ratings went up pretty there was a bit of a spike. And, you know, this sort of expectation was sort of kind of a sympathy thing. You know, the whole Trump thing, as you said, was recorded on TV. You know, was on TV was at a rally. Is this sort of drama as the Secret Service agents sort of pile on him, and he gets up and he's sort of got his hand up and saying, fight and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, you highly cynical of me. And of course, this isn't what happened. But you know, if you were a campaign consultant, you couldn't write it up better, right? I mean minor best and minor injury or worst, a minor injury and back on the campaign trail right before the convention. You know, there were all those convention delegates who wore the, you know, the band aid bandages on their ears, because that's what the President Trump was, because that's where we shot. But, you know, after that, I mean what? I mean, it really didn't change the the trajectory of the race. I don't think very much at all. Clearly, you had some ramifications, particularly for the Secret Service, I think it had some have some interesting effects on how these kinds of events are organized going forward. It might, although it doesn't seem to, so far, but it might have a player crimp Trump's rallies going forward, in terms of legit. Sticks and, but, but other than that, I mean, this is a historic event. This is a huge and then we're saying it had minimal effect on the race, which is, which is amazing,

Emilia Rivadeneira 25:12
yeah, and you kind of touch on, like, my subsequent question, we're like, on the same wavelength, about, like, you know, there has been fear of, like, further political violence, and that involves, like, you know, like the logistics side of it, and like future campaigns and like rallies and like the Secret Service. And so what are your thoughts on this, like, about, like, just further political violence in the run up to November?

Andrew Taylor 25:39
Yeah, I didn't touch on that? Yeah. I mean, that's plausible to be determined, right? But we haven't seen anything. I mean, you know, people talk about how volatile American politics is today, and certainly that's, that's, that's to some degree true. It's different from what it was in the 1990s say we're more polarized. I mean, now we put into the mix new media technologies, particularly social media. We, you know, you've got January 6, and you know now the assassination attempt, and it's plausible, I suppose that in the trouble and we this seems to be the case with Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was the, who was the gunman who shot at Trump that, you know, it's not these tend-, excuse me, these kinds of things tend to be push, instigated by an individual, rather than, you know, we've got big political movements out there, big groups on all sorts of sides of all sorts of issues who often engage in rhetoric that is, you know, pretty aggressive. Can be advocating violence even. And yet, in Crooks, we have someone who didn't seem to be affected by that, or touched by that at all, exposed to that at all, who engaged, who nearly shot dead a former president and a current presidential candidate. So it's very I think sociologists would say it's notoriously difficult to be able to predict where these things are going to go and where the next threat is coming from in the future. Knock on wood. To date, we really haven't seen any kind of negative effect escalation of the rhetoric or violence in American politics. And possibly, you know, hopefully, it makes people think, well, we bet maybe we need to tone it down a little bit.

Emilia Rivadeneira 27:44
Right. Yeah, um, and on the same like wavelength of the rather the rest, excuse me, the rhetoric, um, how did this event, the attempt assassination and President Trump, former President Trump, um, kind of affected the rhetoric for the Democratic Party, because, like, regardless of you know, it might have not increased, like, voter turnouts and stuff like that. There was, like, this sympathy that kind of like was present on social media. So did this affect in any way the rhetoric of the Democratic Party or not?

Andrew Taylor 28:28
Will you say sympathy for Trump?

Emilia Rivadeneira 28:30
Yes.

Andrew Taylor 28:30
Um, no, I don't think so. I mean, I again, you know, as I said, it's difficult to predict where this whether, what kind of effect this will have. It's possible that, you know, months down the line, years down the line, that you know there might be a tit for tat copycat Crooks himself doesn't seem to be a particularly political person, really, not very engaged in politics, sort of, you know, clearly didn't like Trump, but apparently, you know, might have taken a shot at other political leaders if he'd been given the opportunity. So I don't know. I mean, I you know, again, I hope that it is a way of recommending people tone it down a little bit and be a little bit less hostile and aggressive towards political actors. But who knows?

Emilia Rivadeneira 29:36
Yeah, so moving on. A couple of days later, President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race on July 21 2024, endorsed Harris to be the party's nominee as well. Was this unexpected in Europe?

Andrew Taylor 29:54
Well, I said, you know, probably not, because we talked about in some detail the aftermath of the 27th of June debate. When it happened, it was coming to a crescendo. I thought it might happen earlier. I had I thought that the President might use the Fourth of July holiday, but it took another couple of weeks. But it not particularly. Perhaps the surprise was we were hearing that if he was going to do it, he wasn't going to endorse anybody, and that this might set the stage for a truly open convention, the old fashioned kind of conventions that we had, you know, sort of in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The last time we had a kind of, interestingly enough, the last time we had a kind of eventful convention for the Democrats was 1968 in Chicago, and they're going to be in Chicago, of course, in August, later on, in August, next week. So the big surprise, I think, was how Biden was able if he wanted to do this or not. I think he did. He was persuaded to do this, and how Democrats responded to him in having an amazingly clean handoff, handoff to the Vice President. Many people thought that this might be, as I said, very contested opening convention, perhaps a sort of civil war amongst Democrats fighting over the over the nomination. Harris would clearly be one of the candidates, but only one of maybe three or four. And Biden said, I want her. And Democrats said, a lot of them right away said yes, and then the remainder who could have been a problem, including, for example, former President Barack Obama, fell in line a couple of days later, and she's got, she's already got the pledged votes of a majority of delegates, the delegates themselves. I mean, Biden said, Go to Harris and they will said yes. Well, most of them have said yes. Enough of them have said yes. That to me, is as much of a surprise as anything else. I mean, it's clearly a nomination worth winning. Whoever the Democrat was going to be has a really good chance in November, worth fighting for. And it was Harris without any real debate.

Emilia Rivadeneira 32:32
And so, like, after President Biden withdrew from the race, so I was just going to ask, How is President Kamala like, how is Vice President Kamala Harris positioning herself, kind of like more about the indications of a shift in her campaign strategy of or policy focus?

Andrew Taylor 32:55
Yeah, so we talked at the beginning of the conversation about, you know, what Trump's policy positions were what hers, hers were to you know, one thing she has done is she's tried to step back a little bit from some things that she's done, and particularly things she said during the 2020 presidential primary. We might remember that she was candidate herself in the 2020 primaries, and she, at the beginning of that, many people thought she was going to be pretty strong, and would put her name amongst two or three favorites, including, of course, Joe Biden himself. And she really didn't perform very well and during those debates, and by her actions in the United States Senate, particularly in sponsoring or co-sponsoring legislation, she's come out in favor of things such as the Green New Deal, which was a, which is a legit piece of legislation pushed by progressives, which is basically, you know, we need to spend all this money on green technology. It's more than that, but that's a central feature of it. We need to have a federal, federal government guarantee that everyone has it has a job, and it's going to be very, very expensive. But this is important. We can do this. We can pay for it by taxing, put increasing taxes, particularly on rich Americans, etc. And she's backed away from that. She's backed away from some stuff that she said during 2020 during all of the the protests and the fighting over George Floyd, where she was fairly vocal advocate for this kind of defund the police position, and some of that was actually she was trying to kind of move to a left, because amongst many progressives, she had a reputation. She was a prosecutor, and so she kind of was distrusted by a lot of people. It, for example, in the Black Lives Matter movement, and then she moved to the left to placate them. But now she's got a because it's a minority position in American politics, she's got to try to move back to the center on that particular issue. So she's working, I think, hard to do that. And you know, she's, she's announced her running mate, of course, in Minnesota, you probably were going to go there. And Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, of course, we didn't mention JD Vance, senator from Ohio, who President Trump has put on his ticket. Walz, I think in some ways, was an effort to sort of say, you know, I'm going to put a kind of good, solid, boring, you know, Midwestern guy on the ticket, although Walz is in some of his positions, particularly as governor of Minnesota, not so much when he was in the US House of Representatives, because the district he represented was fairly conservative or moderate, but the state of Minnesota is further to the left than his district. And as the government Minnesota, he has taken some fairly progressive positions on issues, but I think stylistically, at least, he was put there to sort of say, you know, Kamala Harris is, you know, pretty liberal, but you know, she can't be that liberal if Tim Walz is on the on the ticket with her.

Emilia Rivadeneira 36:22
Yeah, um, and yeah, we were actually gonna touch on that as well. Um, but before going to that, I wanted to ask if there's any challenges you foresee for the Democratic Party as they adapt to this new landscape, which is, you know, having Kamala Harris as their ticket and nominee.

Andrew Taylor 36:45
Well, maybe, I mean, she's not Joe Biden, and there are some differences there. And compared to a Joe Biden, who's on his form, on his game, that she might have be weaker on certain things, and he would be, she might bring some certain strengths. One of the concerns about Biden, and I don't think this was related to his advancing age or diminishing health, but he'd had, was losing some traction amongst minority populations, particularly amongst hispanic and black men, and maybe Harris can short that's important base for the Democratic Party. Democratic candidate cannot really become president without winning that say somewhere in the range of about 85% of the black vote and 65 to 70% of the Latino vote, and some polls are suggesting that Biden was slipping there, and there's a sense that perhaps Harris can, can, can do that. She also brings out a generational contrast with Trump, when we tend to think of Joe Biden as old and maybe he is, yes, he is, but Donald Trump's only three years younger, and now you know all that argument that was being put forward, that you know that you've got someone who's too old for the President to be President. Well, now if that's the case, it's Trump, and I don't know how effective that will be, but it certainly changes the dynamic for the Trump campaign, and sort of pushes that back in there, in their court. So changes the dynamic obviously bring some positives. It may be in terms of for some independents and moderate voters, she may seem further to the left than Biden, and that might be an issue for them. So they're probably some negatives as well. But, you know, I think we mentioned this, the Democrats were come to the conclusion that they weren't going to win with Biden the way things were going. The trouble for the President, of course, is if he, if he did, had a heart attack, let's say, say this. I don't wish this on anybody he'd had a heart attack everybody Oh, my God. You know, this is terrible. The president's clearly getting older. And then, you know, about a week later, he's walking out of hospital, waving to everybody. You could say, you know, he's recovered. This is great. Is actually showing but when you when it's just a sort of slow decline, which is attributable to just aging that all of it happens to all of us that doesn't get reversed, and so it was only going to get worse. And so obviously they bailed on him.

Emilia Rivadeneira 39:33
And well, now touching more on how the candidates have picked their VP's. So we have Tim Walz for Democratic Party and then JD Vance for the Republican Party. Um, so what's there to know about each of these candidates? I know that you touch a little bit on Tim Walz, but you know, just touching in general.

Andrew Taylor 39:57
Yeah. So, yeah, I did. Um, you know, I think one of the of the appeal was to Harris was that not that well known. It's not really any surprises. He's got a pretty good resume. I mean, you know, he's a high school teacher and coach, you know, pretty sort of straight laced, boring Midwestern governor doesn't have any combat experience, but as military experience, National Guard, you know, family guy that I think recommended him to her. It was interesting. You know, there were, obviously, we're all speculating as who it would was going to be. And in the days, for a short period of time, people were talking about it would be our own governor.

Emilia Rivadeneira 40:52
Yes.

Andrew Taylor 40:52
Right, Governor Roy Cooper, who's term limited and without a job as of January. And, you know, with all respect to Governor Cooper, maybe sort of seen like, kind of the boring state, even handed, steady guy like Governor Walz is, and I think seen as kind of, at least nationally, as a relatively moderate Democrat. But there were others Cooper pulled himself up out of it, I think, largely because he told he wasn't going to be the nominee, so he just sort of said, I'll withdraw my name. But there were others at the end, and particularly two others, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who was seen as very, very plausible. Pennsylvania is one of those states that's seen as a battleground state very important in this election, one of those blue wall states that Biden flipped from Trump in 2020 that with Michigan and Wisconsin, Shapiro is very popular. There a couple of things that many people say, and I'm not sure how true this is, obviously someone. I'll ask Kamala Harris this at some stage, but Shapiro is Jewish and has been a very strong supporter of Israel. And one of the interesting things we haven't mentioned, Gaza and what's going on in the Middle East, that's sort of a kind of dividing line amongst Democrats at the moment, and is something that obviously the Vice President's gonna have to deal with on the campaign trail once she really gets in the heat of it. Um, and some people argue that Shapiro, because of his positions, was kind of pushed out or not pushed out. He never was in, but it was, was came second or third as a result of that. And it wouldn't, you know, he might have been in if he'd just been someone else who was a governor of Pennsylvania and then senator from Arizona called Mark Kelly, who I thought was probably a pretty good would have been a pretty good pick. Arizona, of course, is seen as very close, and as one of those states that Biden was able to win very narrowly in 2020 and Kelly has a pretty good personal stories, Senator. He's an astronaut. His wife is Gab- is Gabby Giffords, who was shot. People might remember. Students don't remember. This is 2011 at one of she was a congresswoman at one of her events, and has been a big, strong proponent of gun control, and that might have been an interesting issue to play on, but ultimately it was Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, and then former President Trump picked JD Vance, who's a senator from Ohio. New senator from Ohio. Vance is a very interesting character. He's young. He's, I don't even think he's 40. I think he's 39 he rose to prominence. Wrote a book called Hillbilly Elegy, which is about sort of blue collar background in Appalachia. You're a really smart kid in poor circumstances with a broken family who sort of makes good. Had himself, had been in the Marines, in the military, and you know, he's got a sort of good story as well rags to riches, and is become pretty Trumpy. One of the interesting things about all the candidates. We mentioned, several candidates that Vice President Harris was thinking about from President Trump was thinking about not only people like JD Vance, but sen- Senator Marco Rubio, Florida, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina as a few others. But that and Vance has this problem as well. Have having said things about Trump in the past that are not very flattering, and so this has been a sort of a little bit uncomfortable for, for him. I think it would have been uncomfortable for Rubio and Scott as well, because they done and others, they said the same kind of things. You know, Trump is terrible, and now, you know, I'm big Trump, but Trump saw something in Vance. Sort of he would be very loyal he, and I don't know whether this true or not, but some people have argued that Trump sees him as a sort of natural successor to the kind of Trump MAGA legacy, whatever it would be, either after this election, if Trump loses, or after the next presidential term, should he win?

Emilia Rivadeneira 45:24
Yeah, and touching specifically on each just, you know, how we see them as a match, like, you know, like Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Andrew Taylor 45:37
Yeah.

Emilia Rivadeneira 45:37
and former President Donald Trump and JD Vance. What does each VP candidate bring specifically just like to each ticket, like to each just like in that,

Andrew Taylor 45:51
I think I covered it a little bit, obviously, the the kind of thinking in American politics, and I teach this to the students as well. That is that traditionally, major party nominees have picked running mates, not because they think that they can, you know, be president. Should they be stricken or die without, you know, missing a beat, or they would be very good bureaucrats, or very good, you know, at running some kind of organization or bureau or agency. They pick them purely, maybe that's an exaggeration, but largely to win the election, and so they provide some kind of broader appeal, or they address a weakness of the candidate themselves, person at the top of the ticket, and so cumulatively, the two of them are a kind of match made in heaven, where they have there's a sort of synergistic effect where their appeal is greater than the appeal of two of them as individuals, Which of course, means that the running mate should be pretty different from the nominee. And I think in both of these cases, that is true. I think it's, you know, obviously true. Just looking at Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, right, you got gender and racial differences, you don't have a generational difference. Well, actually, their birthday is very close together. Walzs is just 60. Vice President Harris will be 60 just before the election. Trump and Vance are two white guys, but they look very different as well, right? Trump is basically twice the age of Vance. So there's some obvious then you look at where Walz and Vance are from. And I know neither Ohio nor Minnesota are one of those three blue wall states, those states that flip that the Trump flipped red in 2016 and then Biden took back and made them blue, the so called blue wall states in 2020, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But their profiles are very similar to Minnesota and Ohio and, you know, Minnesota borders Wisconsin and Ohio borders Pennsylvania. You know they are. I think those pics are also designed with that in mind as well. So yes, and I don't think neither Harris nor Trump were thinking, although Harris did say, I mean, one of the arguments we mentioned Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly, for example, one of the reasons why Harris said she did pick Walz was and people have around her have also said this was personal chemistry. And I do think that is important. I do think you know you want someone you can trust you could get on with when you're on the stage, you're both look happy together, or you're not gonna be on the stage together that much, because you can be going different parts of the country, but when you are and so that might be important as well. But I think Harris and Trump were really looking at you. Looking at, who can help me win this election?

Emilia Rivadeneira 49:04
Yeah, for sure, and kind of like as the last question, aside from the events you know that we have mentioned, from your perspective, what, what are other significant political events or developments that occurred over this summer that you know might have an influence in the upcoming elections.

Andrew Taylor 49:30
Yeah, we haven't really talked about the world outside the candidates right in the campaign so well, there are a couple of things I think, with the economy is always important. And, you know, there are some indicators that the sort of basic economic terrain is changing a little bit. So good news for I guess now it's vice president Harris, or the Democrats, the incumbent party, is that inflation, which has been a real scurge, and something that Trump and Republicans have been playing on for a while, seems to be moderating quite a bit. The bad news is that one of the reasons that might be so is because the economy, general economy, is softening a little bit, and we still have very, very low unemployment by historical standards, but it's starting to creep up a little bit. And some of the indicators are that we, you know, the economy might be softening, not not talking about going into a deep, hard recession, as probably too late, even if we were to have too much of an effect in the November election. But there might be some of that going on. Then again, good news for the Democrats, related to that is that softening of the reduction in inflation may it does seem as though it will convince the Federal Reserve that we can cut interest rates. And our interest rates again, by historical standards, sky high, but they're basically as high as they've been, really since the early 1990s mid 1990s and that's how to crimp and obviously affected people who want to buy houses and purchase large items like cars. So that's been going on. Foreign policy, you know, the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia and in Gaza Middle East just kind of grind on the general outlines of those haven't changed very much. We keep thinking we're on the verge of a ceasefire and some kind of short term agreement between the Israelis and Hamas. We think we, you know, we don't know where we are with Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine looks good sometimes, and it looks in trouble others. But that continues. China continues to be big and powerful. That's not changed very much. Over the summer, with regards to, you know, two years ago, we had the Dobbs decision, which, you know, with regards to abortion, from the Supreme Court that that was huge. We've had some really huge we talked about the decision about presidential immunity earlier in the conversation. There have been other big decisions, for example, in the Loper Bright case, which is, I don't want to get into technical details now, but has to do with the administrative law, which could have profound effects on American politics, but voters aren't really interested in that. We haven't really had, I don't think the kind of big, Blockbuster Supreme Court decision that would affect the campaign and would have immediate effects on politics the long term, yeah, but not media. So it has been an, it has been a summer, not really about the changing nature of American life, policy and sort of general, broad landscape, but the the actual events within the confines of the campaigns have been amazingly dramatic. And so we were right to spend most of our conversation talking about those and right, and you you left the last question for that other thing, because compared to, you know, the debate, the conviction, Biden dropping out, the assassination attempt, Harris being the nominee, events and Wolf's picks, those, those are the, those are the big things. The the sort of changing of the of the broader landscape has been very minimal, yeah,

Emilia Rivadeneira 53:52
um, for sure. And I guess we'll also, like, see, you know, like, each candidate's viewpoints on, like, you know, foreign policy and, like, economy, you know, in this new upcoming debate as well, and like, you know, their presentations and stuff. So, so, yeah. So, thank you so much for being here today. This has been a really insightful interview. As you said. You know, the summer was filled with just so many things that has happened, and I'm glad to just like, have you here today to kind of like, you know, explain to our audience and students, just like, catch up on those events that happen over the summer.

Andrew Taylor 54:28
Well, thanks for having me. Emilia,

Emilia Rivadeneira 54:30
yeah, thank you so much.

This has been your host, Emilia Renee, thanks for listening to Eye on the Triangle. For back episodes of the show. Go to WKNC.org/podcasts. Music In today's episode is Krakatoa by Noah Stark, licensed under Creative Commons.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai