#and American Democrats are mostly just like yeah I mean let's compromise maybe we can put half of a worker in the machine sometimes??

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Impeachment: Episode 2, Following the Strongest

PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to This Fucking Impeachment, Weekend Edition. With me in the studio is Conn mac Emer. Conn, thanks for coming in on a weekend, I couldn’t get Gill to do it.

CONN: It is my pleasure. I mean that.

PLAIDDER: Thanks, I appreciate--

CONN: I LIVE FOR THIS.

PLAIDDER: Oooook...Conn, events that have unfolded since our last episode reminded me of one we taped during the government shutdown, which was called “The Art of the Possible.”

CONN: Oh yeah. I remember that.

PLAIDDER: Good. I wanted to--

CONN: That’s the one where you were arguing with me up one side and down the other and then just about an hour after that episode aired it turned out that I was ENTIRELY CORRECT.

PLAIDDER: Not entirely, friend. You were right about this part--Kleark, can you run the clip--

CONN: Look, with a process like this, it’s like a dance between what actually happens and what people believe is possible. Sometimes a thing has to actually happen before people believe it can happen.

PLAIDDER: Like that asshole becoming President of the United States.

CONN: Exactly. And sometimes, a thing can’t happen until enough people start to believe it could happen.

PLAIDDER: With you so far, friend.

PLAIDDER: But on the other hand, you did make the following predictions--Kleark, can we have clip #2 please--

CONN: When he loses the support of his party, he will go. Either they will impeach and remove him, or–and I think this much more likely–they will promise him that if he resigns they will not put him in jail. And he will do it.

PLAIDDER:--thanks, Kleark--and these predictions have NOT come true.

CONN: Yet.

PLAIDDER: I KNEW YOU WERE--

CONN: I know you knew. I just didn’t want to disappoint.

PLAIDDER: Well, anyway, indeed, I have started to think you might be right about some of this.

CONN: I am right about ALL of it.

PLAIDDER: I’ve started to think that impeachability might be like electability.

CONN: In our country we have neither of these concepts.

PLAIDDER: It’s basically our version of “most people follow the strongest.”

CONN: Oh. I get it.

PLAIDDER: So then--

CONN: No, wait, I don’t.

PLAIDDER: OK. “Electability” is something people talk about as if it is some kind concrete thing. In fact, “electability” is ‘real’ in that it can have real-world effects, but it is not ‘real’ in that it is not based on any material givens. Electability is a product of the collective imagination. It is self-creating, self-sustaining, and (sometimes) self-defeating. You become electable when enough people believe that you are electable. Anxiety about “electability” is a real problem in Democratic primaries, because it leads people to vote for whoever’s considered the most “electable” candidate instead of the one they want. Then, when the most “electable” person wins the primary, everyone’s depressed at how middle of the road and boring and Republican-lite they are, and they don’t turn out, and that’s how you get things like Buttercup winning that fucking election.

CONN: And Biden was supposed to be your most “electable” candidate?

PLAIDDER: Yes. Because he was an old white man who stood next to Obama for 8 years.

CONN: Your country truly is a magical and bizarre place.

PLAIDDER: I know. Anyway, what was beginning to happen before all this came out is that perceptions of “electability” were starting to change. The fact that Elizabeth Warren’s events are drawing large crowds has led people to start wondering whether she might actually be “electable.” This has led to her rising in the polls, and to Biden dropping--because people who liked her all along but thought she wasn’t “electable” are now starting to back her. I think her campaign managers understand this. They have been working very hard to create “electability” for her and it seems to be working.

CONN: So in your country, people won’t vote for their candidate if they don’t think that candidate will win.

PLAIDDER: Not everyone, but--

CONN: Thus ensuring that their candidate doesn’t win.

PLAIDDER: Friend, if you will allow me to quote “Waving Through A Window” from the musical Dear Evan Hansen, liberal voters in this country have learned to slam on the brakes before they’ve even turned the key.

CONN: I don’t understand any of that sentence.

PLAIDDER: Ironically, Buttercup’s election has sort of broken the electability thing, because now people are like, well fuck, ANYONE can be electable.

CONN: But this show is about impeachment...?

PLAIDDER: I’m coming to that. I think all those public opinion polls they did showing Americans didn’t support Buttercup’s impeachment worked the same way. I think people said they were against impeachment because they thought too many other people were against impeachment. As long as they thought impeachment didn’t have enough popular support, they didn’t want to support impeachment either. Because they thought that if impeachment really WAS that unpopular, impeaching Buttercup would only screw up the 2020 elections. But, like, half of those people with whom impeachment was supposed to be “unpopular” were people thinking, I so fucking WANT this guy impeached but not if it’s gonna cost us the House in 2020. In fact I think that impeachment hasn’t really been “unpopular;” it’s just that too many people thought it was impossible.

CONN: But you don’t have any evidence for this.

PLAIDDER: I do not. But I do know that some early polling suggests that now that it looks like it’s actually going to happen, impeachment is suddenly becoming more “popular.” Here’s one by Politico/Morning Consult showing a 7 point jump in people who want Buttercup impeached. Democratic support for it has increased 13%--but Republican support for it has doubled (from 5% to 10%, but still) and now 39% of independents also want him impeached.

CONN: That’s one poll.

PLAIDDER: Five thirty-eight has more.

CONN: They say it’s all still preliminary.

PLAIDDER: Dude, which of us is supposed to be the optimist here?

CONN: Friend, I am EXPLODING with optimism at this moment, but not because of polling. Or because of what’s happening with “impeachability.”

PLAIDDER: All right then, what lit your optimism fuse today?

CONN: You have forgotten something very important in this art of the possible.

PLAIDDER: All right, what?

CONN: Your president’s enablers, cronies, and craven toadies need to believe that it’s possible that his power over them might come to an end.

PLAIDDER: OK, so electability, impeachability, and...

CONN: Let’s call it destructability.

PLAIDDER: I like it!

CONN: I think your president’s destructability index is on the rise. I think it will only accelerate from here.

PLAIDDER: There’s no polling for that.

CONN: No. But if you look at the stories coming out now, you can clearly see that people who have been tolerating this monster for years purely out of fear of the consequences are starting to imagine a world in which he is no longer in power. And they would like to enter that world without having been utterly despoiled of their dignity and self-respect.

PLAIDDER: I wouldn’t have thought they still had any.

CONN: Friend, the number of people in the world who are as completely solipsistic and thoroughly amoral as your president is very small. Most people care something about the good opinion of their fellow-humans, even if it’s only their families and friends. It’s one thing to go along with a corrupt regime thinking that nobody will ever know about the thousand little compromises you made and the scores of presidential evils you concealed. It’s another to lie awake at night thinking about what will happen when the man you’ve been servicing has been brought down and now everyone who helped him is going to be dragged through the mire.

PLAIDDER: But is anyone really imagining that, apart from people like you and me?

CONN: Well, there’s already been one resignation. You don’t resign over a scandal if you still trust your boss to protect you. Also someone is telling the press about the calls with Mohammad Bin Salman and Vladimir Putin which were also stored on that classified server--presumably in hopes that someone else will be held responsible for it.

PLAIDDER: I kind of want to know how that Jamal Khashoggi conversation went, but I also kind of really, really don’t.

CONN: Steve Schwarzman, one of these “unofficial” envoys that your president seems to have used so much, is now contradicting your president in public--because he’s afraid of being drawn into this. Your Secretary of State has been subpoenaed. John Bolton appears to have been involved in all this--he’s just left on very bad terms. Meanwhile, your president is wildly flailing around looking for people he can throw to the wolves--starting, amazingly, with his own vice president. Which was bad strategy, because everyone ELSE watches that and says, “If the boss has already turned on his #2, he will CERTAINLY turn on me.” And so they’ve started to turn on your president, pre-emptively.

PLAIDDER: Because mostly people follow the strongest.

CONN: Yes.

PLAIDDER: But nobody REALLY knows who’s the strongest.

CONN: Exactly.

PLAIDDER: So people who stop believing he’s the strongest, stop following him.

CONN: Correct.

PLAIDDER: And if enough people stop following...

CONN: Then those 35 Republican Senators who have always hated him will throw him onto the pyre and act like they’re the ones who saved the country from him.

PLAIDDER: Well. I guess we’ll see.

CONN: YOU will see that I am correct.

PLAIDDER: Yeah, maybe.

CONN: You want to bet against me? Just to make it interesting.

PLAIDDER: Well, we’re out of time for now. Tune in...I dunno, could be 4 hours from now, for our next episode of This Fucking Impeachment!

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): From the launch of his campaign to stump speeches on the trail, former Vice President Joe Biden is running on the idea that President Trump and his administration are an aberration. “This is not the Republican Party,” Biden recently told a crowd in Iowa. But some pundits, party operatives and other 2020 candidates think Biden’s stance is shortsighted and argue that Trump’s presidency is a symptom of a much bigger problem in the GOP.

So how much of an aberration is Trump? He has challenged norms and democratic values while in office, but Republicans have largely declined to break rank. Does this mean that Trump’s candidacy was just a reflection of the direction the party was already headed in?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Can you draw a through-line between Trump and the Republicans that came before him? Sure, yeah. I’m not sure it’s a particularly linear through-line, though.

Something can be in line with a trend but still be an outlier. Home runs are way up in baseball this year, but if someone winds up finishing the season with 83 home runs, that’s still an outlier. Climate change makes heat extremes much more likely, but if it’s 105 degrees in Boston in May, that’s still an outlier.

matt.grossmann (Matt Grossmann, political science professor at Michigan State University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): And the tendency for Republicans to get behind their president is actually one area of continuity. Republicans trust government consistently more under Republican presidents, often dramatically reversing course after a Democratic president.

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): But at what point does it make sense to characterize something as an outlier? For example, people often point to the “Access Hollywood” tape or Trump’s remarks about the appearance of women, or his statements about immigrants as instances of norm violation. If you look at American history, racism and sexism aren’t unfamiliar themes, but it is unusual, especially in the modern era, for them to be so front and center.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Some Republican politicians were proto-Trumps. Think former Maine Gov. Paul LePage or Iowa Rep. Steve King. The rise of the tea party foregrounded a lot of Republicans who were saying outrageous things. And I don’t know if we want to count dog whistles, like the Willie Horton ad.

julia_azari: I would count those dog whistles and point out that Democrats were not immune to the temptations of making these kinds of appeals in that era either.

natesilver: Well, you can’t really characterize it as an outlier until you see where the next couple of data points line up, Julia. Which is why my basic meta-argument is that people are way too confident about this question, in either direction.

But that’s why I like the baseball or climate change analogy. Boston might be many times more likely to have a 105-degree day now than it was 50 years ago. That doesn’t mean it’s the new normal, however.

julia_azari: Of course we can’t know if Trump is the new normal yet. But I am not satisfied with this answer. I think we can and should have some sort of metric for whether his presidency is truly out of step with trends or historical patterns.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer):

In New Hampshire, Joe Biden predicts that once President Trump is out of office, Republicans will have “an epiphany” and work with Democrats toward consensus.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 14, 2019

So this is the core question to me.

Does Biden actually believe this? Or is he just saying it because swing voters might like it?

sarahf: Right. On the question of whether Trump is an aberration, a lot of what we’re asking, I think, is whether a “return to normalcy” is even possible. Within the Democratic Party, there is a perception that former President Barack Obama spent years trying to compromise with congressional Republicans and that those efforts often fell flat — Merrick Garland’s thwarted nomination to the Supreme Court is an example these folks point to. And so now it’s a question of whether Democratic voters actually think bipartisanship can still work. Biden is clearly running on a platform that he thinks it can.

julia_azari: The normalcy Biden describes was never a thing.

perry: Do you think Biden is being sincere? Biden’s comment was almost exactly what Obama said in 2012 about how his victory would break the fever of GOP opposition, and Obama was totally wrong, of course. I was shocked that Biden said something that seemed so obviously clueless, but it might fit with his electoral strategy.

natesilver: I think Biden is being sincere, for what it’s worth. He came up in an era of relatively high comity and bipartisanship in the Senate.

nrakich: And Biden is friends with many Republicans in the Senate, like Lindsey Graham. It makes sense that he thinks he can woo them to his side.

But also a President Biden would probably need to get buy-in from only a few Republican senators in order to pass his agenda and get this “bipartisanship” thing to work.

I don’t think even Biden thinks he will convince a majority of the GOP caucus to vote for his policies.

matt.grossmann: Biden was the primary Democrat involved in cutting three separate budget deals with Mitch McConnell under Obama (going in wildly different directions), so he may have little reason to believe it can’t still be done. Believe it or not, most new laws are still bipartisan, and majority parties are getting no better at enacting their agenda.

sarahf: The McConnell whisperer!

julia_azari: Ha. From a strategic perspective, maybe it makes sense. It could be that people in the primary electorate are thinking more “I would like to get something done, and maybe Biden can do it” than “fuck the other party.” I’m not sure how any of the other Democratic presidential candidates think they will get their big policy ideas through a GOP-controlled Senate.

nrakich: I do think Biden has the best chance of striking deals with a GOP Senate. It’s just that people are overestimating how big of a difference he would make. Biden might be able to convince three GOP senators to vote with him. A President Tulsi Gabbard might be able to convince zero.

natesilver: TuLsI GaBBaRd hAs BiPaRtIsAn FrIeNdS ToO, Rakich, such as former Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock.

nrakich: Ha. That’s actually true — lots of Republicans are outspoken about how much they like Gabbard, so maybe she was a bad example.

But FWIW, according to a March poll from Quinnipiac University, Democrats said 52 percent to 39 percent that they would prefer a candidate who mostly works with Republicans rather than one who mostly stands up to them.

julia_azari: I just wonder if people want compromise in practice as much as in theory — and how having a divisive Republican president like Trump may have changed that.

sarahf: So, Julia, you’re saying that there might be a larger appetite now for a more combative Democratic president who is less willing to compromise?

I buy that, and I think we’re seeing that reflected in the messaging of several candidates.

julia_azari: Yeah, I think that’s a possibility. There is still this idea about building a new national consensus (at least on the Left). People think that there will be an election like 1964 or 1980 (at least, the narrative of 1980 as a landslide — Reagan won only 50.7 percent of the popular vote) and that there will be a 55 percent to 60 percent majority for a general approach to governance. But I think that’s a steep climb no matter how many rallies in the heartland or Amtrak trips through Scranton one takes.

matt.grossmann: 100 percent agree.

natesilver: I do think we have to ask how Republicans would react to Trump being defeated, by Biden or someone else.

Let’s say it’s pretty bad, for instance. The GOP loses the popular vote by 6 points, and all the major swing states go to the Democrat. Republicans lose another 15 House seats. And Democrats eke out a 51-49 Senate majority.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a one-term president, and that president (George H.W. Bush) came after Reagan had held two terms, so Republicans couldn’t feel too upset. Trump being a one-termer would be different, more analogous to Jimmy Carter.

nrakich: I’m not sure they would react that much, Nate? I feel like McConnell is just doing his thing, Trump or no.

matt.grossmann: Republicans would act like they usually do — a big backlash against the new Democratic president.

sarahf: You don’t think it matters to Republicans who the Democratic candidate is because party trumps everything?

nrakich: Sarah, I think some Republicans would prefer Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders because they’re easier to demonize (in the same way that some Democrats preferred having Trump as the GOP nominee in 2016), and some would prefer Biden because they think the country would be less ruined under a more moderate president.

natesilver: But if Trump loses, we’d be looking at the Republican nominee having lost the popular vote for the presidency in seven out of eight election cycles.

And all of this happening despite a pretty good economy.

I don’t know. I think the party might react a lot differently than in 2008 when John McCain losing was more or less inevitable.

nrakich: Maybe Republicans would come out with an autopsy report again, like they did after the 2012 election, for how they can return to relevance — and then ignore it again in 2024, like they did in 2016.

matt.grossmann: But isn’t a backlash against the new Democratic president the best way to deal with that?

julia_azari: In the past, it has mattered somewhat whether the defeat was expected, but otherwise, losing parties have reacted by building up institutions, thinking about innovation, etc. My research on election interpretation and what we have seen with 2016 and 2018 suggest to me that Republicans would try to put forth an election narrative to serve their ends. For example, after 2012, some conservative commentators on Twitter advanced this “it’s hard to compete with Santa Claus” narrative, suggesting that Democrats’ victories were because they had promised unrealistic benefits to voters, rather than that they had won based on the strength of the campaign or the ideas.

nrakich: I’m sure there would be hand-wringing, but I just don’t know if it will change Republican behavior.

McConnell will still try to make the new Democratic president impotent, and the party’s new presidential hopefuls — the Tom Cottons and Mike Pences and Nikki Haleys of the world — will still go to Iowa talking about how unfairly Trump was treated.

natesilver: I’m reallllly not sure about that, Rakich. I think a lot of Republicans would be happy to throw Trump under the bus.

nrakich: You don’t think GOP voters (as opposed to elites) would still be loyal to Trump?

And therefore that the path to the 2024 nomination for Republican hopefuls would be cozying up to him?

If Trump loses, he will certainly remain a major force in the party. He’ll keep tweeting stuff to his base, and he might even run again in 2024! The GOP might be stuck with Trump as long as he’s still alive.

natesilver: I think you’re forgetting how much presidents are treated as losers once they lose.

Hillary Clinton has become relatively unpopular among Democrats, for instance, even though there might be a lot of reasons to feel sympathetic toward her.

matt.grossmann: And would it be that hard for Pence or Haley to thread the needle? They can offer a very different style of leadership but still say they believe Trump protected America and brought about economic recovery.

julia_azari: Yeah. I think it’s possible you will see Trumpism without Trump. In my opinion, the party has moved in a Trump-y direction (although I know Matt disagrees somewhat at least on the direction).

natesilver: “Trumpism without Trump” reminds me of “Garfield minus Garfield”:

nrakich: If it’s a close election, how many Republicans will think Trump lost fair and square, though?

natesilver: Well, I’m stipulating that it won’t be a close election.

nrakich: That’s true.

natesilver: (Stipulating, not predicting, for the case of this hypothetical.)

julia_azari: Even if it’s not, I think there will be narrative delegitimizing it.

matt.grossmann: Did we ever answer the question of whether calling Trump an aberration was a good strategy for Biden? It’s very similar to what Clinton and Obama said in 2016, but it may have been an ineffective strategy then; some Democratic-leaning voters decided it meant that Trump was less conservative than the Republican Party.

julia_azari: I’ve been thinking of the question as: “Will reaching out to anti-Trump Republicans in the electorate in this way convince them to vote for the Democratic candidate?”

But as Rakich said earlier, I think the conventional wisdom might overestimate the difference between having Biden in this position relative to any of the other candidates.

natesilver: Liberals on Twitter don’t seem to like Biden’s strategy, which is a strong sign that it’s a good strategy.

I think his comments about Republicans magically deciding to compromise were dumb, but overall the “Trump is an aberration” message is liable to be fairly well-received.

After all, Democrats spend a whole ton of time talking about how Trump is historically, unprecedentedly terrible and must be curbed, impeached, etc.

julia_azari: But Democratic primary voters might see it as a signal of less animosity toward Republicans, and my rather depressing read of a rather depressing political science literature suggests that may not be all that strategic.

natesilver: I think a lot of Biden’s messages are things that will do “just fine” with primary voters but are fairly good general election messages.

matt.grossmann: “I will be able to reach out to disaffected Obama-Trump supporters” is a good argument. “We have to get things done and I’m the one to do it” is a good argument. “I will get us past this horrible era” is even a good argument. But saying positive things about Republicans might not be necessary or even helpful.

nrakich: Remember that Biden has paired his “This is not the Republican Party” with a healthy dose of “Trump is a terrible human being and the worst thing to ever happen to America and someone who should be punched in the mouth,” which probably will appeal to primary voters.

natesilver: Also, keep in mind that Biden specifically rests his case on electability.

So if, hypothetically, independents like him because he seems more reasonable and that helps to prop him up in the polls, that could make primary voters more likely to stay with him.

julia_azari: Put that way, it comes down to whether Democratic primary voters hate Trump or Republicans more.

nrakich: (I think the answer is Trump.)

natesilver: Democratic primary voters hate Trump more than the Republican Party, right?

matt.grossmann: They do, but they dislike both.

natesilver: Or maybe it’s pretty close, actually. Only 10 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of the GOP.

nrakich: So maybe they don’t think of Trump as an aberration. Maybe they don’t overthink it. Maybe they just think the Republican Party is whatever it is in the moment.

natesilver: The fact that George W. Bush’s image has been rehabilitated quite a bit is interesting. And maybe suggests that Biden is right (strategy-wise) to treat Trump as an aberration. Bush left office with a very, very low approval rating, and now a lot of people feel nostalgic for him.

nrakich: Yeah, 61 percent of Americans said they viewed Bush favorably in this 2018 poll, including 54 percent of Democrats.

matt.grossmann: Trump was perceived differently than the Republican Party in early 2016, which is often what happens in a presidential contest. Opinions of Bush became less aligned with opinions of Republicans once Trump came along. But I don’t think it will be an issue in the same way this time around: Trump is now a known quantity and opinions won’t likely change until Republicans have another nominee.

[dawnaress]

Why TV judge Jerry Springer supports court-packing: 'It's important to have a Supreme Court that recognizes America's values'

With Senate Republicans likely to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett as Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement on the Supreme Court this week, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will face renewed pressure to expand the court’s ranks should he defeat President Donald Trump on Nov. 3. Court expansion — or, as some call it, court-packing — is a controversial topic that the vice president has so far avoided discussing in-depth, to the frustration of some of his supporters.

But if Biden decides to move ahead, he’ll have the support of at least one famous judge: Jerry Springer. “I originally didn’t think it was a good idea,” the talk show host-turned-presiding justice of NBC’s syndicated courtroom series, Judge Jerry, tells Yahoo Entertainment. “But now I’m OK with extending the Supreme Court if that’s what it takes to guarantee the ideal America.”

For Springer, the argument in favor of expanding is a clear-cut case of balancing more the conservative values Barrett is expected to favor in cases involving abortion and voting versus the more progressive values favored by majorities of the country in national polls. “On the one hand, you have the value of having nine justices for so much of our history,” Springer explains. “But I balance that against the value of, for the next two generations, women aren’t going to have control over their own bodies and we’re not going to enforce the right of everyone to vote. When I balance those values against the value of saying, ‘At least we kept it at nine,’ it’s not a balance of moral equivalency. It’s important to have a Supreme Court that recognizes America’s values of saying all people are created equal.”

Like the rest of the country, Springer — who was a politician and journalist before getting into daytime television in the 1990s with The Jerry Springer Show — closely followed Barrett’s confirmation hearings and took issues with several of her comments, including her description of herself as an “originalist” when it comes to interpretations of the Constitution. “That theory makes absolutely no sense, and I’ll tell you why: the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was a political process, and everyone had different intentions and different ideas. It was weeks and weeks of bargaining and negotiating, so if you want to decipher the original intent, you’re not being intellectually honest, because there was no single idea. They all compromised! Maybe you can figure out one person’s intention, but there is no way you can figure out the collective invention.”

“Also,” Springer continues, “Are you going to rely on the intentions of people from 240 years ago who thought that Black people were three-fifths of a human being and that women should not have the right to vote? It’s just nonsense; these are people who are otherwise very smart using a big word to rationalize their negative point of view that hurts at least half the country. We can give it all kinds of names and rationales, but at the end, we’re down to this: Is it more important to keep the Supreme Court at nine, or is it more important that all people in America have equal rights? That's the only issue at stake. Whichever side you come out on, OK, but at least be honest to the decision that you're making.”

Clearly, Judge Jerry isn’t shy about adjudicating the current political situation in America. In a wide-ranging interview, he addresses why he voted for Biden, how the justice system is “set up to give white men the advantage,” and why the coronavirus will likely doom Trump’s chances of reelection.

Yahoo Entertainment: Because of coronavirus restrictions, you haven’t been able to have an audience for recent episodes. The audience reaction was always a big part of The Jerry Springer Show — is it odd not having people in the room now?

Jerry Springer: Well, the old show was obviously 100 percent dependent on a live audience, but in a courtroom, the audience has no purpose except to be background. Otherwise, they’re not involved and have to keep quiet. So it doesn’t really affect the decisions I make or the law I have to abide by, but it does change the atmosphere. What you’ll see in some episodes is that the producers have given me a laugh button, so whenever I make a quip or something like that, I push the button and you hear laughter in this empty courtroom.

Is it different for you to be put in the position of judging the people you’re talking to? As a talk show host, you mostly remained an impartial observer helping along the conversation.

The truth is that, in my life, I’m not very judgmental, and that’s due to my liberalism. I believe that people are entitled to live the lives they want as long as they don't hurt anyone else. I don’t cast judgment, because I don’t walk in their shoes. But you’re right: now I have that responsibility. I guess I treat it as if I’m their father or grandfather, and they need to be disciplined. I don’t [judge] out of meanness. I try to be understanding, and explain to them why I’m reaching the decision, and that it’s not a reflection on them or that they’re a bad person. In so many of the cases, the only entities that know the truth are the actual parties and God. Everyone else is just listening to what they’re saying and trying to make a fair judgment.

Do you ever get the sense that any of them are playing to the cameras?

When these suits are filed, no one has any idea that one day they’re going to be on television. Every morning, we have producers that look at every case that has been filed in the United States of America the day before, and if it seems like an interesting case, the plaintiff and defendant get a call going, “Would you like to have your case adjudicated by Jerry Springer on national television?” I am fully aware that if someone didn’t like me going in, why would they ever agree to have me be their judge? So obviously, the people that are coming before us are people that start out with a pretty good feeling about me. They think, “Hey, this is cool. Let's have Jerry do it.” So in the very beginning, you can almost sense their nervousness of being in front of a guy they’ve watched on television for thirty years. That creates a different dynamic, and I’m conscious of that. So in the beginning, I let them state their case and get comfortable with me. Often they’ll just call me, “Jerry” and the producers will have to tell them, “For decorum, call him Judge Jerry.”

Based on the cases that you’re hearing, what’s your sense of what life for ordinary Americans is like right now?

Generally, the things that people are most angry or upset about are the things that happen in their everyday lives. Stuff like, “Why won't the neighbors cut that tree down?” Or, “That person insulted me.” That stuff tends to make you more angry than reading about legislation that Congress may have passed that has more worldly impact. Most often people are — for better or worse — most concerned with the things that immediately touch their family. So you can’t really judge a nation on what makes them angry in the moment.

But you can judge a nation based on what policies they tolerate, and that’s why this election is, in a sense, more about the voters and what we tolerate in our country from our government. I think people are going to the polls to say, “Does Trump really represent our country and our values?” And so, on election night, the whole world will be watching to find out what America is really like and what we tolerate. Because if you tolerate someone who is in a position of power, then what does that say about you? Aren’t you basically just driving the getaway car for this person who assaults our values?

Are you supporting Joe Biden?

Yeah, I’ve already voted for him. I think this election has nothing to do with being a Democrat or a Republican, and the best evidence you have is that if you talk to a friend who says, “I’m voting for Trump,” there’s always an explanation. They always start the sentence by saying, “Well, I know what he's like,” or, “I don't approve of his values,” or, “I wish he wouldn't use that language.” There’s always a qualification, which should be a red flag. Character matters: in fact, I would argue that character is the single most important trait of any president because you can delegate everything else. What you can’t delegate is character. You can get the smartest people on the world to be on your staff, but if you have bad character as a president, you will get the smartest people to figure out ways to do bad things, and that’s exactly what we're witnessing now.

What we’re also seeing is that an incredible number of people that worked for him have been coming out with books, articles and political statements saying something bad about his character. So at some point, aren’t we all agreeing — even if we're lifelong Republicans — that this was not the right pick? Go back to being a Republican later, but at this point, be honest enough that America is better than this. Tom Brokaw would never write a book about this generation that would say, “This was America's greatest generation.”

As someone who defined reality television in the 1990s, do you recognize those tendencies in Trump?

Well, yeah. And you know what? I have nothing personally against Trump, I just don’t think he should be president. I was the host of the Miss Universe Pageant back in 2008 when he still owned it, and he was only nice to me. So this isn’t a personal vendetta. We ought to be able to separate that. Hopefully, we’ll stand up and say, “Enough of this. This is wrong and we know it’s wrong. Let’s move on.”

Character matters: in fact, I would argue that character is the single most important trait of any president Jerry Springer

We’re having a larger conversation right now about the racial inequities built into the American justice system. What’s your take on where we are in that regard?

I don’t think there’s any question that we live in a society where almost everything has been set up to give white men — particularly wealthy white men — the advantage. That's the whole system. I’ll give you an example: I graduated from Northwestern University’s law school in 1968. Mind you, this was a major university in Chicago. We had 190 students in my graduating class, and of those 190 students, two were women and one was Black. I mean, think about that! This wasn’t some rural community in the South someplace. And these are the lawyers that become our judges and politicians.

So how do we even pretend that race hasn’t been a factor here? So if I've got African-American parties before me on the show, and I’m sitting up there on the bench as this old, rich white guy, of course I'm conscious of that. That’s why I keep telling them: “I am no better than anybody here. Get it? And so here’s why I’m reaching this decision.” But that’s not something I do just because I became a judge. I think you grow up with those values. One thing my parents taught me, and which we teach our children and grandchildren, is that you never ever judge someone based on what they are. You only judge people based on what they do. If you can live your life like that, you will never be prejudiced.

Does it frustrate you to see cases like Breonna Taylor, where no police officers were charged with her death despite widespread protests?

Sure, you question that. The system is such that there are always particular details that we don’t know in terms of what happens before a grand jury. So the reason that decision is reached may have been built into the system, not because of anyone on the grand jury. But the rules are inevitably set up to protect a white society. I don’t care what laws you change now: it still hasn’t been an equal competition for several generations. You've been having this race in our country for 240 years where people have a cinder block around their foot as they're racing the white guy.

Then you say, “You know what? Take that cinder block off his legs. Now let's continue the race.” Well, the white guy is already halfway around the track! So when people say, “Look, we're not discriminating now,” maybe you’re not, but you're still living with the benefits of having had that discrimination for 200 years. That's what the institutional racism means. It means that you haven't leveled the playing field; you’ve decided to try to level it now, but you're not making up for what happened before. And that's what this moment is all about.

The worst kind of racism, sometimes, is the polite racism, not the wacko white supremacists. They’re evil, but they’re wackos and everyone sees that. It’s the polite racists that dress up, and then just justify policies that when they’re alone in the room with just God, they know are mean and not fair. Why do they support making it difficult for Black people or Hispanic people to vote? What possible justification do you have for doing it? Because you know that if you can stop Black people from voting, the Republican has a better chance of winning.

We live in a society where almost everything has been set up to give white men — particularly wealthy white men — the advantage. Jerry Springer

One interesting side effect of the Trump era seems to be that political sex scandals seem to be having less consequence now. As someone with a scandal in your own past, do you think that’s changed now?

When people voted for Trump, I think they made that clear. Society has changed altogether, especially with social media. Behavior hasn’t changed, but people's reaction to it has, just because we live in a different world. I remember when The Jerry Springer Show first aired, it was considered outrageous. Nowadays, it seems so ridiculously tame compared to what's on social media.

Have you adjudicated any cases where the pandemic is a factor? And are you seeing a frustration with quarantine restrictions?

Yeah, we’ve had some. We’ve dealt with cases of people being evicted from their homes because they couldn't pay rent, which may violate a local ordinance or a state law. When you watch the show, you won’t be able to tell that I'm in the courtroom in Connecticut, but the plaintiff and defendant are elsewhere in the country. Because of the magic of television, it looks like they’re standing in the courtroom with me. Of course, people are getting upset with this whole [quarantine] situation, but what we have trouble understanding is this is the United States of America and we have the worst performance in terms of getting a grip on this virus than virtually any country in the world. I mean, how did that happen? How could we be the one country in the world that couldn’t make enough masks, and that couldn’t get enough ventilators?

I mean, look at what FDR did to mobilize America when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor in 1941! Every factory was turned into making the planes and the tanks we needed, and we won the war. This administration couldn’t even mobilize to have masks made. And frankly, if Biden wins, it won't be due to any of these social issues. Trump will lose because of his being unable to deal with the pandemic: that’s what is doing him in. It’d be nice to say it happened because people had a social conscience, but I think it’s more likely to be because of his failure to handle the pandemic.