Abbey Santos:
Hello. Thank you for joining us today on our discussion on democracy; Is Democracy On Thin Ice or On Fire. I am Abbey Santos, I work in the Office of Alumni Weekend and Class Programs, and today we will hear from Professor Jeffrey Lenowitz and Michael Walzer, who is a member of the Class of 1956. Jeffrey Lenowitz is the Meyer and W. Walter Jaffe Assistant Professor of Politics at Brandeis University, where he teaches and researches on political theory with a focus on democratic, legal, and constitutional theory. His forthcoming book, Constitutional Ratification without Reason, looks at the history, effects, and possible normative justifications for using ratification procedures during a constitution-making process. His next projects focus on the legitimacy of constitution-making processes, more generally, and how we should theorize punishment when it comes to the crimes and misbehaviors of state actors. Before coming to Brandeis Professor Lenowitz received his doctorate from Columbia University and was a prize postdoctoral research fellow at Nuffield College and the University of Oxford.
Abbey Santos:
Michael Walzer, is a member of the Class of 1956. He received an honorary degree many years later and served for five years as an alumni rep on the Alumni Board. Michael was the Co-Editor of Distant Magazine, founded by Irving Howe and Lou Coser at Brandeis, when he was an undergrad, for more than 25 years. He has written too many books to count, and is now an emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Abbey Santos:
Before we begin, I would encourage participants to use the chat function on Zoom to submit any additional questions as the final part of the event will be a Q&A with Jeffrey and Michael. To submit a question, please click on the chat button at the bottom of your zoom window and submit your question. We will try to get to as many questions as we can. So without further ado, let's begin. I'm going to start with Jeffrey; when it comes to politics, what are you most worried about?
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here and to be able to talk with Professor Walter, he has far more impressive things he's done than me but I'm excited to have this conversation. So, what am I worried about with democracy? Well, a lot of things, as I imagine you all are as well. So, I just tried to narrow down some of the things that have been keeping me up at night. The first is just in the US, the dual problem of siloed and false information in news. By this I mean I'm concerned about the fact that today it is entirely possible for millions and millions of people to get news designed solely to flatter and further shape their political ideology in its already trending direction.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
But that's only the first prong of the worry and that isn't necessarily new, and it isn't necessarily disastrous, though it's alarming. The second prong is the willingness for some of these news sources, and some of the politicians that work in tandem with them, to lie, to tell untruths. This, in combination with the other thing I find particularly worrying, we are literally seeing the rise of a large percentage of the American public that genuinely believe demonstrable falsehoods. The most obvious examples has to do with Trump's alleged victory in the previous election, but examples can also be found in beliefs of climate change and vaccines.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
It's also perplexing, because it's unclear how it can be cured. Once people get their information from completely distinct areas and literal silos, it's not at all obvious how to shake them out of it unless you put a control over one of these silos, which we as liberals don't want to do. So that's my first worry, I'm just going to say some brief things about different things and then Michael and I can talk about them. Second, I'm worried perennially about the Supreme Court. I look upon its current configuration and see it as a genuine threat to every American, and more importantly, to our country's democracy. It's very unrepresentative, it's extremely conservative in very unique ways, and it has increasing powers. I believe a reform movement is absolutely necessary, but at the same time I see little hope in it.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
If we want to have a conversation about possible reforms to the Supreme Court, I can mention my two favorite. One is to strip their discretionary docket so they are not able to choose which cases they hear. This would make it harder to game the Supreme Court and introduce cases often which are anti-democratic or unrepresentative of popular opinion, for one's favorite justice and also, just take away their agenda-setting power. Another, which is far more wild is for the legislative body in the US to use its power and create a new court, which would be something like a German-style Constitutional Court which would just do judicial review. So, if anyone's interested in chatting about those, I'm worried about the Supreme Court and I think a lot about how to reform it.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
A third worry I have I can talk about by working from a recent article in The New York Times that Nate Cohn, who's a brilliant writer, wrote an article called Why Political Sectarianism Is a Growing Threat to American democracy. And Cohn is a very smart political analyst, and in his article he highlights the problem in the US of the two political parties not just disagreeing on policy, but increasingly seeing each other as the enemy. He claims that this makes compromise impossible, and encourages elected officials to violate norms in the pursuit of an agenda or an electoral victory. The idea being that such norms only really operate when you don't see the other side as the enemy; you don't care about norms, the suggestion is, when you see the other side as the enemy.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
And all this follows because composition between enemies is not about policy differences and discussion about them, but rather just about winning and beating the other side. So, he labels this sectarianism and what he's really working from is this recent article in Science Magazine, it was a short five-page article by 16 social scientists who claim that this new thing, sectarianism, is rising in the United States. Sectarianism being more familiar from contexts like Ireland, various Middle Eastern countries, and in South Asia, where the threat isn't rising populism, that's five years ago, we don't worry about that anymore. It's actually this kind of seeing the other side as a genuine enemy that you can't and don't want to compromise with.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Sectarianism, understood in this way, is often seen to arise by a minority party refusing to be ruled by a majority they see wrong. It involves two different, distinct identity groups who not only clash on policy but see each other as alien and immoral. So, I like this article, but I think it makes a bunch of mistakes. If you haven't read it, I recommend it, it's good, also the five-page piece from science which he's working from. I think it's a mistake because it's conflating two things. It's true that something like sectarianism is rising in the United States. If you look at the political science literature on polarization, this is distinct, it's not just people grouping with different policy preferences, it's that a lot of time these policy preferences are derived just because they're the opposite of what the other party is.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
But this kind of analysis, I think, overlooks a distinct problem which is that we don't see symmetry right now. The distinct problem is that one party is in the process of radicalizing and becoming anti-democratic. The Republican Party, and increasingly, it's elites, is refusing not just to lose the democratic game, but they're upset that they're not able to impose their substantive preferences on the majority of the country. Sectarianism or negative partisanship or effective polarization, these are different names for the same thing, are all real. But the danger they pose is distinct from the anti-democratic motivations of the modern Republican Party. The science article that Cohn cites was subject to similar criticism, and its authors have subsequently tried to clarify that yes they think sectarianism is a problem, but that's different than just what is happening to the Republican Party; which is that many of its members, and increasingly its core members, are actively trying to undermine democracy however you want to define it.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
You can see it in the destruction of voting rights that's happened. I'm from Georgia, this is very close to my mind what's going on there of voter disenfranchisement. It comes from increased gerrymandering. So I guess for me the biggest threat, among all of that I've worried about, is just what's happening to the Republican Party because at least in my lifetime, which is relatively short, I haven't seen a party in the United States be so actively and so publicly in favor of what most people would take is core democratic principles. And so, I think the sectarian lens, while helpful, risks not putting focus on that, which it's a unique situation, one party is really trying to stamp out democracy.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
And I'll conclude by saying the additional problem is just that the constitutional institutions that we have in this country are increasingly pushing our country structurally away from democracy, and it is facilitating the Republican Party in moving in an anti-democratic direction because so many aspects that dictate voting and everything in our country are now further and more and more anti-democratic; the nature of the Senate, the way in which districting happens, there's tons of innovative institutional solutions that can solve these problems, but it's unclear to see how we'll get there. So, these are just some of the general worries I have. I know I threw a lot out there. I'll stop and let Professor Walter also talk.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
I guess, a final thing if I had to mention was just I'm worried about migration in all democracies in the globe; we should expect more and more migration because of climate change and armed conflict and increasing global inequality, and I'm worried whether developed democracies can keep their soul. I'm troubled by Denmark recently, pretty healthy democracy, but just ruled that there's no more conflict in Syria so they can send all the refugees back, just violating non-refoulement principles, general refugee principles and international law, but I hope this country doesn't go in the same direction. But anyway, lots to talk about and I also want to hear from Michael.
Michael Walzer:
Okay. I want to welcome all my classmates. As I remember Brandeis in the ‘50s, we had less to worry about, but maybe that's because we were so young. I'm worried about all the things that Jeffrey listed and then I'll add a few. I want to begin with a tale of two cities. I came to Brandeis from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which was a steel town, a small-scale Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. And Johnstown was a Democratic stronghold, the union had come in 1941 and soon after that, the city became a democratic city. And then in the late '70s the steel industry went into decline and in the '80s it virtually disappeared. In 2016, Johnstown voted two to one for Donald Trump.
Michael Walzer:
Now, I'm now living in Princeton, New Jersey, which is one of the richest towns in the United States. Princeton, in 2016, voted eight to one for Hillary Clinton. And there you have an account of where our politics is these days. The Democratic Party is the party of the professional, upper middle-class, and the minorities; and the Republican Party is, increasingly, not yet entirely, the party of the very rich, the haut bourgeoisie as we used to call them, and the white working class. And what I want to focus on is the process through which the Democratic Party lost it's classic constituency, it's classic working-class base.
Michael Walzer:
And you see that loss in Johnstown, and in the 2020 election; there were actually small increases in the black vote for Republicans among black men, and slightly larger increases among Hispanic, both socially conservative families, and Hispanic men who are often in the same vulnerable situation as white workers in towns like Johnstown. So, it was neoliberalism of the Clinton administration, and partly continuing in the Obama administration, that represented a kind of abandonment of the working class, of the workers who had been so central to the ascendancy of the Democratic Party. Policies of austerity, what Clinton called the end of welfare as we knew it, deregulation. But above all, the radical decline of union membership, which the Democrats watched and did nothing to stop.
Michael Walzer:
And so, we found ourselves by 2016, with a new working class; unorganized, extremely vulnerable. Many of the men, especially, holding jobs which were in the service sector, having previously held jobs in the industrial sector with substantial benefits, healthcare pension, and then moving in places like Johnstown when industry collapsed, moving into jobs that were often temporary, without the protection of the union, with inadequate, if any benefits. In other words, moving into what we came to call the precariat; a class of people whose lives were precarious, who were vulnerable in new ways. Above all, of class, that did not feel that its material interests were represented by the Democratic Party, which had always been the party of material interests.
Michael Walzer:
Instead, they found their resentments, their vulnerability, their anxiety, their fearfulness, represented in the Republican Party, or many of them did. I don't want to exaggerate, there are still a lot of white workers voting Democratic, and the erosion of black and Hispanic workers is very small so far. But still, we now have, and Jeffrey was describing this, I would describe it a little differently; we have a political party that exploits the resentments, the fearfulness, the floating hostility of the workers who feel effectively disenfranchised, who feel left behind. A politics of resentment replacing the politics of material interests, I think, is what I'm most fear and in the United States.
Michael Walzer:
We never, particularly people who were Republican-type, small R Republican, political theorists, always disdained the kind of voters who asked, "Is voting Democratic good for the steelworkers? Is it good for the Jews? Is it good for the members of the CIO?" As Rousseau said, they wanted voters to ask, "Is voting this way good for the country?" But in fact, asking, "Is it good for me? Is it good for my group? Is it good for the workers?" is a sane question, is a rational question. And I think that the Democrats need to become, again, a political party that represents material interests so that people can say, "It is good for me and my family and my city or my fellow workers. It's good for me to vote this way." A politics of resentment, I don't want to call it a fascist politics. But the makings of fascism are in that kind of politics, whereas material interest breeds social democracy.
Michael Walzer:
And so, the question for me is how does the Democratic Party recapture the working class and I think that is the ambition of the Biden administration above all of its big program for what they call infrastructure, which goes far beyond what is usually called infrastructure and actually aims at reestablishing the Democratic Party as the representative of the interests of American workers. And I hope very much that it can do that. But I fear what we are now facing, which is a party which mobilizes amazing numbers, 74 million people voted for Donald Trump in 2020, that's more than voted for him four years before. And somehow, he doesn't represent their well-being; the Republican Party is not a force for the well-being of the people who are voting for it. And that's what I was most worried about in American politics today. And I'll stop there.
Abbey Santos:
Jeffrey, would you like to respond?
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Yeah. I agree. I mean, so far there's not a lot to disagree with. I do think that is a problem. I mean, if we're talking about how can the Democratic Party combat what the Republican Party is coming from, I mean I think a lot of it is just going to have to figure out ways to make the party stop eating itself and fighting among itself for little reason. I mean, I share some of the similar social democratic or even Marxist sensibilities as Michael in that I think a key is recognizing that a lot of criticism from more centuries people in the Democratic Parties, or older democratic elites is that the Democratic Party, particularly the new wave of them, are too focused on identity politics, and that this has come at a cost of further alienating this lost group of workers. And I think that's not necessarily true.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
In actuality, the fight is for the same thing; affordable housing, job protections, labor protections, these sorts of things. If these are front and center in the Democratic Party, those are both exactly what marginalized communities are asking for and exactly what the white working class, the portion of it that did go and vote for the Republican Party, lost. I mean, it's exactly true; trade unions were 22% when Clinton came to power. Now it's 10. These were just eviscerated under Democratic watch. I agree 100% with what Michael said about that that the Democratic Party, I don't think they stopped being a party of material interests. They just became a party of a very concentrated material interests, which is very few people with lots of money who gave a lot of money.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
And so, the question is how can this be combated? Part of it is just the perennial thing that many people have asked for which is some semblance of campaign finance reform, which would disincentivize the avoidance of these sorts of policies which are going to erode the bottom line of a lot of corporations in America. Their money, the argument is, was needed in the kind of current political battles but if we make it so that no one can get them, I think that would be a big step in the direction. But I mean I think there is a lot to be hopeful for here, a lot of the new younger forces in the Democratic Party, the issues they care about, are these very issues; how do we make the lives of poor working people in this country better?
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
That's all they want to talk about. That's all my students want to talk about. I mean, I wanted to say something positive is that while I'm deeply depressed about the state of democracy in the US, when I go and teach, I get a little happy again because at least Brandeis students are so revved up and so focused on these very issues we're talking about and so involved, whether it is on the streets in protest, joining every possible club and wanting to write extra papers about how to change American democracy, they're ready to do it. And so that, in some sense, gives me some hope. But as far as response, I agree with you. I think that's a big issue. I think all of the issues we've raised tie into each other, they're all one part of this unfortunate feedback loop where democracy is in.
Michael Walzer:
Right. So, we are on the same page and maybe that says something about continuity at Brandeis University.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
It could be. It could be. So, did we want to take questions or what's the...
Abbey Santos:
Yeah. I will encourage participants to put any questions that they have in the chat. One that I have for you, Jeffrey; "You mentioned Supreme Court reform, what ways would you suggest or would you like to see reform of that system?"
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Yeah. So, there's a lot of discussion over what to do about the Supreme Court. A lot of those arguments, the most popular ones are increase the number of justices which is constitutional, so some of the reforms are constitutional and some of them are not or there's a gray area. Increasing the number of justices, you can do that. The problem is everyone says this might cause a tit-for-tat where the court is just justices are added, it makes it even more partisan. I don't necessarily think that will happen but it's not my preferred way.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
A very nice thing that's not often talked about is that currently the court, as I was saying, chooses its own docket. Since the Judiciary Act of 1925, they've been able to have a discretionary docket which makes sense because there's 10,000 cases. But by being able to choose them, it makes them agenda setters, which makes them basically be able to create the laws that they want to create. And it also means that activist groups write cases tailored for the judges that they have in mind, and that the judges signal what kind of cases they want to take in order to push their policy.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
I see that there's generally the Supreme Court, particularly now as a legislative body, problematic. And so, one way to undercut that is simply to make it so they don't have discretionary power of their docket, which can be done. You can think of a variety of institutional measures to do that; one would be to have lower federal judges in groups vote on cases they think they need to be evaluated by the court, and that would be how the docket of 100 or so cases is formed. This I think would solve a lot of the worries that many people have.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Another idea would be to create a Constitutional Court, which a lot of other countries have. Where you have a court; if it's a new court, which is also in the power of the legislative body, it would only do judicial review and then we could design it from scratch without worrying about constitutional issues. And there you could have something like short-term appointments on the court that are rotated through all the federal judiciary, which would again make it harder for it to be consistently partisan in one direction or not, and you could also stagger those rules so whoever's in power at the legislature would get a certain number of people.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
And the positions would be short, so again it would solve a lot of the problems that a lot of scholars of the court are worried about. So, I mean those are the things that I'm thinking about in regards to the Supreme Court and it's something that needs to be done because for people who study these things the Supreme Court has never been this powerful. It has been this partisan in the 19th century, but when it was this partisan, it didn't have the kind of sheer raw power that the court has on every aspect of our life. And given that it's the most anti-democratic institution, I think it should be a focus of a desire for reform.
Michael Walzer:
Right. I think from a political standpoint, it might make sense to wait for the expected decisions from this court on things like voting rights, on healthcare, on the infrastructural bill which will surely be challenged in the courts. Let them make a few very unpopular decisions, and then it will be politically easier to move forward in one way or another to change the current system. But I think we need to give them a little time and maybe even hope for the kind of correction that we saw in '37, '38 after FDR proposed a court packing scheme that would not have mustered sufficient support even in a Democratic Congress but that did change the court. I think some of the justices may be a little nervous about their own partisanship, so I would hope for a political environment that makes your suggestions more practical than they are right now.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Yep. No. I hear that. Yeah. I don't see them forthcoming, but who knows what the court will do?
Abbey Santos:
Thank you both. Next question, "Is there a problem in arriving at the idea that the 74 million are not voting for their 'own benefit,' and whether that does get a pushback of elitism and evaluation of others, or how to confront that or answer that?"
Michael Walzer:
What is the classic left response to people who don't vote in their own interest is to describe them as suffering from false consciousness? I've always been leery about that idea. I do think people have material interests that I would like to see them defending politically, but they also have moral and interests and emotional and psychological interests, which at this moment, the Republican Party represents for many of them. And so, we have to we have to change that. We have to change the calculations they are making and we have to do that without the kind of critique that the word false consciousness suggests which is, "It's their fault. They don't realize where their interests lie. They've been brainwashed. They've been socialized into a capitalist society." I don't want to make that kind of an argument. I want to say it's the responsibility of political activists to reestablish connections along the material rather than the psychological interest.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Yeah. I mean, you don't use that language when speaking to the voters you want to recapture, but I mean I think that in regards to what Michael was saying, regardless of whether or not you supported or were excited about Sanders and the movement and the rise of DSA, one thing that they are giving to the Democratic Party as a whole is bringing back the skills of just talking about the kind of material interests that Michael was talking about, which is front and center constantly reminding voters, even if they're not motivated by it right now, that they should be. That there's only one party that's really worrying about increasing the minimum wage, there's only one party that's talking about labor protections and job security. It's really only one of the two parties.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
And while these things don't look like they're motivating voters right now, they're not the main motivators, the other ones are these identity-based religious, emotional issues, talking about them, which Democratic politicians stopped doing, on a day-to-day campaign-level strategy might bring them back. I mean, the tricky thing about all of this and how we know voters act is that it's not one sided. It's not as if voters have preferences and then politicians explain where they stand and then voters vote for them. It's a very cyclical thing; the kind of things that the preferences that voters have and how they weigh them are often given to them by politicians than the media landscape.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
And so, the idea that, "Well, they don't care about these interests anymore," isn't true. It just needs to be put front and center by the Democratic Party and by the general media landscape that we have. Yeah. To respond to Rachel's question, you don't use that language, it does sound elitist. But it's not that they're not voting for their own benefit, it's that the party that they're electing is harming their day to day lives when it comes to how much they get paid, and whether they can get a mortgage, and whether they're going to be able to send their kids to school.
Abbey Santos:
Great. Thank you. Any further concerns about voter suppressions?
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
I'll start with that one. Yes. I mean, part of my anger at the Supreme Court reached its zenith with Shelby versus Holder which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act. And there's very few Supreme Court opinions that legislation is introduced an hour after they're released, and that's what happened with that opinion; the voting ID laws were released immediately and we're seeing it get worse. I think it's a big concern and I think it's a concern that literally won't be solved until legislation is passed in both houses that reinstates the Voting Rights Act. H.R. 1 which is getting a lot of conversation, which is the big voting bill, isn't actually the Voting Rights Act, it just says we support the legislation that's already been introduced.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
So, I think if there's ever going to be a reason to either temporarily set aside or bypass the filibuster, it would be in the new Voting Rights Act. Because as the Supreme Court opinion in Shelby vs holder admitted, it worked; states constantly tried to take away the vote from people and the processes set out in the Voting Rights Act prevented them from doing so. And now that it's basically gone, all that's left is section two which is very hard to prove, we're seeing states like my own just make it extremely difficult for people to vote. And I mean, it's not clear how to stop it.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
To stop it, the burden of proof is on the person suing that these things will negatively impact a particular group, which is very hard to prove definitively legally. So that's why a new Voting Rights Act has to be front and center on an agenda of, I think, one it should to be both parties, but unfortunately, it's just the Democratic Party now. And this is just also exacerbating the generally anti-democratic nature of our federal government. I mean, just to give an example of Georgia, my mom's representative lives three and a half hours away from her because they've carved up the districts in Georgia to manipulate the Democratic vote so heavily. And this is just going to continue. That's just another form of, in some sense, voter suppression. So, to answer Martin's question, I have a lot of concerns about voter suppression, but I think the answer is what was already there, which is another Voting Rights Act which even the Supreme Court said they'd be fine with.
Michael Walzer:
Right. But we also have to mobilize the voters against voter restrictions. If they cut the hours at a voting site, then flood the voting site with voters at the hours that it's open, and keep it open. This is an issue for organizing and that has to be the other side of whatever we're trying to do in Washington.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
No. Absolutely. I think Georgia's the blueprint for this. They've got some of the best organization when it comes to voting strategies that are in the country and we saw the results of them. But that's why Georgia was first to pass this legislation; to stop them. And it was well thought out, those kind of strategies, well now we can't get water to people in line waiting to vote. That was targeting these strategies of flooding the ballots. I mean, it's disgusting when you think about what they're trying to do.
Michael Walzer:
Right.
Abbey Santos:
Great. Thank you. So, the next question, we talked about what you were both worried about when it comes to politics and democracy, "Do you see any possible healthy path forward or perhaps what makes you hopeful for the future of democracy?"
Michael Walzer:
Well, Jeffrey has already pointed us to his own students as a source of hope, and all of the evidence suggests that young people are more ready for the kind of politics we have been defending here, right now more ready than their elders, so that has to be the greatest source of hope.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Yep. I mean, I would agree. I think that not only my own anecdotal evidence where I constantly feel bad at my college self when I see what my students are doing, I was nowhere near as politically active as they are. So besides that, you're right; the empirical evidence is that the younger generation is very, very engaged but also an active politics in organizing. So many students want to be organizers. I think when I was 19 I didn't know what that meant. I mean, that speaks more to myself and my generation, but they're all very interested in this and that is hopeful.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
And I think there are paths forward. I think that if you just look at it Biden's approval ratings and more importantly the ratings of what he's trying to do, they're quite positive. So, things are not as bleak as they might seem. If a super-majority of the country was rejecting the kind of things that the Biden administration was doing to walk back what has happened over the last eight years, I would be more worried. But it looks like there's a lot of people that are in favor of them and part of it is just going to be cooling the partisan hatred that was fanned every 10 minutes for the last eight years, and it looks like there is some cooling going on.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Though of course the sectarian literature and all that, all those papers that are coming out have a lack. They are like the data from four months ago, five months ago, a year ago. So, I think things are trending in a positive direction, but it's hard because institutionally it's an uphill battle. We have institutions that make it very hard to do the kind of radical changes that both, it seems like, Michael and I are arguing for and then think are needed, both in Senate rules to just the way that districting is happening, which is just the way our senate is built. I mean, if we want to talk about radical changes, I've always been a fan of Sandy Levinson's ideas for a new constitutional convention but that's a whole another conversation. But I mean, I'm not completely without hope, and those are just some of the reasons why.
Michael Walzer:
And this also has to be a source of some comfort that a large number of Trump voters said that their second choice was Bernie Sanders. So maybe to we have to think about what it would mean to give them their second choice.
Abbey Santos:
Great. Thank you. Are there any other questions from attendees?
Abbey Santos:
(silence).
Abbey Santos:
Okay. Let's see, "How do you, or can you, incorporate some of the recent criticisms on meritocracy with the democracy and composition and interest issues of Democrats?"
Michael Walzer:
Right. Michael Sandel was at Brandeis once, wasn't he?
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Yes. I believe so. Yeah.
Michael Walzer:
Well, he has emerged as the major critic of meritocracy, although the central critique was suggested a long time ago by William Shakespeare who talked about the insolence of office; the insolence of offices is still a problem. We need to make it very clear to all our meritocrats that their competence in their office, assuming they are competent in their office, does not extend beyond their office. And after they perform whatever their professional tasks are, they are just like all other citizens. John Stuart Mill once proposed that we give university graduates a double vote on the grounds that their education had made them wiser. I know too many very well-educated, very learned men and women who are political idiots. So, we need to learn to confine expertise to the area in which it is useful and to deny experts any say that the rest of us don't have outside their areas.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
I mean, I would agree. I think it's more of a problem of technocracy and overreach than just meritocracy. But I mean, also the problem with meritocracy is the problem that a lot of people are mobilizing and talking about today which is that our traditional conceptions of meritocracy are ones that favored a certain kind of person and a certain kind of background. And so, part of what many people like about the idea of meritocracy is just a continued static conception of excellence which leaves a lot of people out and doesn't consider other ways of people being meritous. But I would agree with that. I mean, I think that Sandel's book was accompanying pieces of one of those strangest things I've written a long time where he talks about meritocracy and his solution is more people should go to Harvard. But you could think the solution is improve education generally, rather than get a few more people to go to the Ivy League. But this isn't the kind of talk necessarily about the details of that book.
Abbey Santos:
"In terms of a theory of political change or activism, how does Professor Walzer, or both, view the idea that Democrats abandoned the working class when they were stymied by Gingrich, Cantor, McConnell, neoliberalism and the Tea Party packaging? Or is it that simply the very point on the weakness or vapidy of the Democratic soul? Were Clinton and Obama just not good leaders?"
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Well, I'll just answer one small piece, the last one. I think Obama made, we know, what will be one of the most haunting political mistakes of my lifetime which is to win office and dismantle the movement that got him elected. It's just a kind of almost political fact that the Democratic Party, once he gained office, stopped worrying about local organizing. And we saw it had to be rebuilt from scratch. So, in that sense, were they not good leaders? I think that certainly Obama made a huge mistake in not keeping the energy of a mobilized electorate after George W. Bush.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
But in regards to were they stymied by these people? Yes. But I think that's both at least my point and Michael's which is that it's because they stopped talking about the issues. I mean, they stopped talking about these issues, they were talking about other things, they stopped pushing these issues, they gave it to them. So, I think that just does point to the weakness of the Democratic soul. But it was more specifically addressed to Professor Walzer, so I want to hear what he has to say.
Michael Walzer:
Well, I think you're right. Obama was not, despite his experience in community organizing, he wasn't a movement person. He wasn't in any way a leftist. He was a centrist, those were his instincts, that was his politics and that was apparent, I thought, quite early on. I mean, in 2008 I voted for Hillary in the primary against Obama because I thought she was to his left. Now, maybe by 2016 she didn't demonstrate that. Obama collected 14 million email addresses and used them in the campaign and then never used them again. He had no sense of how to mobilize support even for the health plan which he did believe in however highly compromised it was. And he and Clinton both watched the decline of the unions; the unions were essential to turning out the vote for the Democratic Party and these Democratic politicians had no sense of their centrality, of their great importance. I agree with Jeffrey, 2008 the country was ebullient, so proud of itself for having elected a black president. And then the black president didn't take advantage of the ebullience.
Abbey Santos:
Great. Thank you. So, we're coming up on one o'clock, so I want to be mindful of the time. I'm going to pose the last question to both of you, "What is the role that the media and the internet play and how can they be harnessed in affecting change?"
Michael Walzer:
Jeffrey, that's yours.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
So, I guess I'll address them separately. I mean, I do think that the media industry has changed a lot, obviously, through buyouts and the demise of some newspapers, to their way in which they generate revenue has changed and so I think we've been in a period of flux where unfortunately right now, it's even the non-right wing mediasphere understands that their business and profit model requires people to click on articles. And so, it means that it's easy to look at the hysteria of the right-wing media landscape with Fox being somewhere in the central and then moving on over to Newsmax and OAN and some political newspapers and blogs as being hysterical. But I think that it's in both directions.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
You could just see that Cohn piece, I mean the heading of it and the first paragraph were clearly written by an editor to maximize worry and concern before it actually talked about what it was about and we see that over and over again. So, I don't like bothsidesism, but I think it applies when it comes to the media landscape in that they have a very big, strong, powerful influence on making everyone in the country feel hysterical, which feeds into the sectarianism and some of the other problems that we've discussed. How is that going to change? I have no idea. Hopefully they figure out how to make money, maybe they're going to change the way that ad revenue is done on the internet, and maybe with some breakups of some monopolies, it'll settle things down.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Generally, how can the internet play and be harnessed in effecting change? Well, I would think the negative aspect is obvious, but the positive side is that it's very easy to organize bodies with the tools that are now on our phones. And I think that the increase in protest in this country and people on the street is not just due to some issues coming up but also the ease; it's very easy to organize quick protests and picketing and these sorts of things with phones, with all these different organizing apps. And so I see that if you think that politics needs to go back to the street to affect the kind of change that Professor Walzer and I have been talking about, I think that that's a positive side of what is usually dwelled upon as an insidious development; which is that it's really easy to create organization of human beings constantly in contact with each other, to talk about and go to places to make noise and protest and block things.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
I mean, just kind of a silly but real example just took place with the Super League in Europe. They were going to redo the way that soccer would work in Europe, and they announced it, and literally via online fan organizations, you had hundreds and hundreds of people that within a couple hours were organizing protests against this change. Admittedly, it wasn't about politics, though politics and football in Europe are closely intertwined. But that's just a very recent just think of how quickly you can organize bodies and they shut it down. So, I think in that sense technology and the internet has a very positive role in affecting change because it makes what used to be much more difficult, which is communicating with people who share similar ideas, easier. Of course, that has a negative aspect, which is that all these lunatics who are basically Neo-Nazis can find each other on the internet and then hang out together. But there's also positive side.
Michael Walzer:
Yes. When I remember that in the '60s we managed to produce huge marches and demonstrations without the social media and maybe it did take harder work, but maybe the harder work was a good thing because then the impact was more long-lasting. I don't know. The social media are, to me, a foreign country where I haven't traveled. But think of Dissent Magazine was founded at Brandeis in 1954. At our peak, we had 5,000 subscribers and maybe another 5,000 newsstand or bookstore sales, and we thought we were a political influence. We thought that this was worth doing, and that's the political world that I grew up in.
Michael Walzer:
And Dissent did have some influence, certainly. We were an important part of the arguments that went on within the new left. And without the internet, and without email, and even without fax machines. But I do not know how to make the social media useful to us and not useful to our opponents. I recognize the speed with which the soccer tycoons were brought down, and that was indeed refreshing, but we have been through a year of the most extraordinary civil rights uprising, across America in small towns that we never reached in the '60s. But we have to wait to see what it means to somebody who marched for Black Lives Matter in August of 2020 and where they are in August of 2021. We don't yet know what kind of an impact the social media have. But at my age, I just watch.
Abbey Santos:
Great. I want to extend my thanks to both of you, and for everyone attending this event today. Thank you very much, and enjoy your afternoon.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Thank you all for tuning in and for organizing this. It's great to have such a vibrant alumni body. It's wonderful to speak to you all. And great to see you again, Michael.
Michael Walzer:
Yes. I hope we meet sometime; face to face, as they say.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Yeah.
Michael Walzer:
Bye.
Abbey Santos:
Okay. Thank you.
Jeffrey Lenowitz:
Bye.