Decoding the Dog Whistle

Creators & Guests

Host

Clare Corbould

Dr Clare Corbould is an award-winning scholar of African American history with some knowledge of Pacific and Australian history, especially as they relate to the United States.

Host

Zim Nwokora

Dr Zim Nwokora is a political scientist specialising in the comparative study of political institutions, especially constitutions, political parties and political finance.

What is Presidency Pending?

Welcome to Pending Presidency, the podcast where political and historical experts discuss the latest news on the 2024 US election.
 
Hosted by Deakin’s Dr Clare Corbould and Dr Zim Nwokora, tune in for a thought-provoking discussion where everything is on the table. Will Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump? What do Australians think of the election? What do the latest opinion polls in Australia look like?
 
This podcast is brought to you by the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. Please note that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on this podcast are the individual's own.

Welcome back to Presidency Pending the
podcast that brings the distinctive tang

of Vegemite to US presidential
politics. I’m Clare.

And I’m Zim.

We’re both academics at Deakin’s School
of Humanities and Social Sciences.

In episode two,

we forecast this episode would be a
discussion of presidential scandals,

but we did give ourselves an out in
case something in the campaigning seemed

important enough to change our schedule.

And well Zim, since we last talked,

Donald Trump’s frequent dog whistles
have certainly reached human

audible range.

He’s really changed things up to
outrageous comments about migrants to the

United States.

So let’s start Zim with a
question about the dog whistle.

What exactly is it in
American electoral campaigns?

When did the phrase start to be used?

My earliest recollections of it,

or certainly what I’ve read in literature
suggests that it originated in the 1980s

associated with descriptions
of polling, actually.

So the idea was that a polling question
could be asked in different ways and

elicit different answers
from respondents. Now,

the language around dog whistling
then moved to campaigning,

and there it referred to the various
ways in which a candidate can communicate

signalling different
things to different people.

So in a single communication there are,

I feel like different frequencies at
which the communication is registered.

So for some people it seems
innocuous. For other people,

it carries a more sinister signal.

So the dog whistle is both a way

of signalling something innocuous,

but also a way of signalling something
that is potentially quite grave.

And it’s been often used as a
way of delivering coded racial

messages.

So dog whistling is often a term
that’s associated with the racial

aspect of American politics.

So we see it in policy domains
that are highly racialised,

such as criminal justice,
welfare, unemployment,

and so on.

And before that, there was Nixon’s,
so-called Southern Strategy,

which was another version
of that, wasn’t it?

Absolutely, absolutely.

And I think bringing in the historical
lens on this is very valuable because

dog whistling rises as explicit references

to race become illegitimate. So for most
of the history of the United States,

speaking openly about racial
discrimination has not
been a problem because the

institutions of the country were
grounded in racial differences,

which were legitimated in law
and in politics and in discourse.

And then of course, over time,
in a dialectic complex process,

explicit discrimination becomes illegal,

but racialised attitudes remain.

So candidates in politics have the
complex problem of trying to build

coalitions involving people
who have racialised attitudes,

but you can’t communicate explicitly in
racialised terms that’s no longer legal

or socially acceptable.

And so the dog whistling
becomes a way of nurturing

division along racial grounds
in a context where legal,

explicit racial appeals
are no longer accepted.

So for I think Reagan and then even for
Clinton, there was the welfare queen.

There was Willie Horton who,

so the welfare queen was a sort
of coded message that really was

about black single mothers
and their alleged sort of

draining of the state’s resources by
having baby after baby after baby.

So this was often used
in electoral campaigns.

Willie Horton was a man
who like many prisoners in

states in the United
States in the 1980s, 1988,

so this is the ’88 election between
George W Bush, oh, HW Bush, sorry,

and Michael Dukakis for the Democrats,

and to depict Dukakis as soft on crime,

a group who was not actually
sponsored by the government,

it was a support group,

ran an advertisement featuring
an African-American man
who had gone on weekend

leave from prison. And this
was a very common rule in many,

many states, but he happened
to be from Massachusetts,

which meant that the Republican
Party could tag the Democrats

as soft on crime because when he was
out on one of these weekend leaves,

he committed a heinous crime.
But that was one way that

it was coded.

This kind of behaviour was coded as black
by using that example in particular,

and that served extremely effectively
to shore up some of the Republican

vote. Do you know about the origin
of the dog whistle? Tell me more.

You may know about the
origin. So Francis Galton,

the eugenicist from the 19th century
who was trying to prove that some humans

had evolved more than others,

just as animals had invented something
called, it was a dog whistle,

but effectively to show that some animals
had a higher range and a better range

of hearing than others. It
was an example of evolution.

But he also wanted to show that this was
true for humans. So it has a kind of,

that is not why it became used this way.

There’s no kind of smoking gun that
says that’s why this is the metaphor.

But it’s interesting that the origins
of indeed the technology of an

actual dog whistle also
reside with someone who was a

dreadful racist eugenicist.

Yes, quite an appropriate analogy.
And analogist, you might say.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Staying on the
topic of dog whistling,

we know that candidates
usually take umbrage when
accused of using a dog whistle

technique. What do you make of that?

Yeah,

and I think that goes to the point
you just raised about racism being

illegal or the making of certain kinds
of statements becoming illegal or

unacceptable. And

also when politicians are
campaigning, they don’t,

of course want to put off big groups of
voters who will be repelled by the kind

of racism that some track
in or racial coding.

So they take umbridge at
it. And of course, if a dog
whistle is truly effective,

it won’t be heard by those
who are not meant to hear it.

But I think we’ve all become so
attuned to the way that people do,

or the way that discrimination
and prejudice can appear in

ways that are not just an obvious
kind of lynching or violence or even

a law that discriminates openly against
certain groups of people based on race,

that it’s harder and harder to get
that message across, if you like,

without being caught. So
that yeah, they take umbrage.

Yeah, I mean,

I suppose there’s also another side of
this in that some policy areas it’s very

difficult to talk about without

one risking straying into this
territory of dog whistling.

So there are some policy areas
that raise important questions but

are difficult to discuss because
they’re contentious and controversial.

And I think that these
lines become very blurred,

and therefore some of it is in
the eye of beholder as to whether

one person’s dog whistle is not
another person’s dog whistle,

if to coin a phrase, if you go to read.

Yeah, that’s really going to
take off that one, I think.

Alright.

So it’s not just in the United States
that these coded racist messages have

become a feature of modern
political campaigning.

There are Australian examples too, right?

There are, absolutely.

I think a lot of the language around
immigration and asylum in Australian

law and order is characterised
by a lot of dog whistling.

And I think this isn’t just Australia,

it’s also in the UK
and European countries.

I think a lot of the narrative around
that is full of dog whistling and it

appeals to nativist sentiments and so on.

I think even just kind of pushing
this line of thinking a bit further,

even the choice of issued
emphasis is I think an important

way of setting a dog whistling agenda.

So whenever you say your campaign’s
going to be about immigration, whenever,

if, for example, the immigration rate
has not changed markedly over time,

or it might even have decreased
over time. Well, in a sense,

you’re setting the scene for a
discussion and a debate of in

dog whistling terms. So I
think politicians often have
a very important choice,

not only in what they say,

but in deciding what topics to talk
about and also deciding what topics to

disagree about.

I think this is among the most
important choices that politicians

playing at that top level make.

Right. I would never have thought
of it in that way. I mean,

this is the difference between a
political scientist and a historian.

I would’ve, I think, imagined there
were less choices in their campaigning.

Do you think then in democratic
countries that the dog whistle

campaigning is more a feature
rather than a bug of democracy?

I think it’s difficult to imagine
it as being a feature from a

normative standpoint. If
you kind of think, well,

what are the ideals of
democratic discourse,

then I think dog whistling has
problems in the sense that if you

imagine what the idealised
democratic debate looks like,

it involves candidates speaking
candidly, frankly, without ambiguity.

Why?

In part because this enables us to
hold them to account after the fact.

So if they make promises, then we
can know what those promises are,

we can see whether they’re keeping their
promises and so on. And furthermore,

if we’re thinking about an
idealised form of democratic debate,

then ideally that that debate should
be inclusive of all groups in the

democracy.

And one of the hallmarks of
dog whistling is it often is

targeted at minorities who are
at the margins of the political

system and who are disenfranchised or
relatively weak in terms of their power

terms. So we’re thinking
dog whistling about women,

about ethnic and religious
minorities and so on.

So this kind of discourse is
problematic for at least those two

reasons.

Understood. So you kind of dodged
the question you said, I said,

is it a feature or a bug?
And you said not ideally.

Oh, yes, I did dodge the question.

Now I will sound less like a
politician and actually answer the

question more directly. So
I think it’s not a feature,

it’s quite possibly a bug,

and it’s a bug that I suspect
varies across the kind of
democracy in which we’re

talking about.

So if you imagine a democracy
structured along the lines of the

United States, maybe Australia and the UK,

where we have two big
parties competing for,

to be catchall, to basically
represent large numbers,

most of the population
Could conceivably vote for either party.

Then the leaders of those parties have
a complicated problem in that they

actually have a really broad coalition
of people to try and pull together.

And dog whistling makes sense for
them in that they have to appeal to

people who are put off
by a particular message,

those who are attracted by a particular
message and everyone in between.

So they want to send signals at different
levels of frequency in order to pull

and keep and sustain a broad coalition
of people who feel differently on

complex issues.

You only need to think about how
political leaders are dealing with the

Israel-Palestine conflict. I mean,

they’re speaking out of both sides of
their mouth primarily because they don’t

want to disillusion any
people in a very broad base.

I think in party systems where
parties aren’t so desperate

to appeal to many people, not so
desperate to be catch-all parties,

I think this incentive to
dog whistle is a bit lower.

So multi-party democracies that build
coalitions to govern don’t have quite the

incentive.

Yeah, I think what you end up with
more is rather than dog whistling,

you end up with more explicit statements
and more explicit polarisation

rather than this nebulous,

fuzzy sort that we end up with in two
party systems because of dog whistling.

Thinking of someone like Le Pen
in France, for example, here.

Yeah, that’s a good example.
That’s a good example.

Fantastic. Thank you. Okay.

So we’ve established that racist coding
is fairly regular in campaigning for

elected office, but sometimes

politicians, including
those running for president,

don’t even bother with dog whistling.

So that brings up questions
around the explicit use of race

in campaigns.

You’ve got particular expertise
on the history of race,

so I’m sure our listeners would like
to learn more about how you think about

present racial politics in particular,

what significant themes or lessons
from the history of race in

America are especially relevant for
understanding what’s happening today?

Big question.

Yep. Big question, but a good one. I mean,

the United States and Australia
have long had a kind of

not quite symbiotic relationship,
but a close one. I mean,

the British decided to settle
and invade parts of Australia

because the United States literally
closed off the avenue there with the

revolution and independence to send
prisoners. So it was in some respect,

the birth of the United States made
the birth of Australia. Of course,

both places heavily populated prior to
British arrival or Spanish or what have

you in the United States. So especially
after the Civil War, in Australia

when politicians, including

the man for whom this university
is named Alfred Deakin,

they’re all looking around the world
for models of federation as they’re

debating how they might federate the
Australian colonies and form a single

nation. And in fact, the Civil
War, which took place in the 1860s,

largely over the issue of the
enslavement of Africans and former,

those descended from Africans in the
United States. And then the very difficult

period afterwards when
the nation was reunified

after the United States
defeated the Confederacy,

but then had to find a way
to forge ahead, first of all,

having lost in the case
of Southern slave holders,

a huge amount of capital that was
literally invested in the people,

the 4 million people who were still
enslaved and a free labour force.

And plenty of northerners who wanted
to keep the union together were not

anti-racist at all.

And they were very much in lockstep
with those southern former slave

holders who very few of whom were
punished in any way for their part in

rebelling from the United States.

I mean in terms of being tried for
treason, for example, very few.

So as they reunited,

they end up with a whole set of new
laws to segregate African-Americans and

a huge kind of conflict that of
course continues to this day.

And the Australian
Federalists, Federationists,

I don’t know what we call them,
looked at this and thought, well,

let’s not do that.

So there were plenty of models in the
United States that the Australians decided

not to emulate,

and one of them was they crowed
often about this was forced labour

and the importation of
people for labour, of course,

they were doing that. Deakin himself
was involved in that trade, and his son,

which is a kind of really
interesting part of that history.

Deakin is a complicated character,

very much progressive in some respects.

And this era is known
as the progressive era.

And the United States and Australia are
sharing all kinds of technologies around

voting,

around the creation of democracies that
where the franchise would be extended to

all men, not to women yet, but to
all men by the end of the century.

You’ve got South Australia
also introducing the vote
for women that eventually

makes it to the United
States by 1919, 1920. So

lots of exchange in over a very long time

period. I think that’s probably enough.

I could talk at great length about
the civil rights movement and this,

that and the other, but I think
that’s probably enough for now.

I would say that one of the
lessons from the election of Obama

that has probably been heard sort of
around the world is that it doesn’t solve

anything. In fact,

to elect someone who a hundred years

ago would not have been imagined by
anyone in the United States as the kind of

person who was going to be
elected president. I mean,

Martin Luther King did say it
would be 40 years, I think in 1968.

He was only just off, I’ve got the
numbers wrong there. Coz he was a bit off.

But there was a great deal of
hope around Obama’s election,

and I think that probably is a lesson
for Australia that simply electing

someone because of the identity categories
that they occupy or the ways that

they are identified by
others does not necessarily,

of course bring great change.

Yeah, thank you, Clare.

And I would just reiterate that point
that the Obama presidency was both

a massive moment of achievement,

but also in some ways a stimulant
for the current era in which we’re

in. And casting that in a wider net.

It’s part of this big complicated
dialectic process between different

forces that are structured,

the relationship between race and
politics in the United States.

Okay. Well, let’s continue
in this general direction,

but move to the very topical set of
questions surrounding the Middle East.

We’ve been hearing all about the
escalating conflict in that region.

How do you think this could
shape the US election campaign?

Oh gosh, you’re throwing me
the hard questions today.

I might get my own back. Well,
first of all, whatever I say,

let me acknowledge that the most important
effect of what’s happening in the

Middle East is not in fact what
happens to the US presidential race.

But having said that, I mean,

this is really significant
potentially for a couple of

reasons. And it has to do with an
electorate where compulsory voting is not

part of the landscape.

So there is plenty of
evidence that a lot of young

people are perhaps turned off,

may not even vote for
the Democratic ticket,

and certainly not the President may not
vote at all because they are so dismayed

or indeed disgusted by
again, a moment of hope,

they hoped that a new leader
might mean new policy or even

a more significant change in tone,

and that has not eventuated. And so there
is some speculation that will affect

Harris’s vote among young people,

perhaps even more obviously,

there’s a huge Arab-American
population in, and Lebanese

particularly, in Michigan,

which is a close state that really
the Democrats really need to win,

and there’s a Democratic governor there
now. Things were looking quite good,

but it is looking as though that
might affect Harris’s vote there,

and I think it’s about 300,000 people,

so that might be enough to sway
that state. That would be a big,

big problem for Harris on her,
as the Americans like to say,

path the presidency. And that would be,

it would be somewhat ironic.

I think Trump is not going to provide
what any of those people would like,

and it perhaps will be
worse on those issues. But

for many people,

I think they can’t see the difference
between the Democrats and the Republican

Party and on the Middle East. And
so that’s where it’s at right now.

I think mean, I’d ask you a follow-up,

which is how do political scientists
account for the failure of either party to

come up with policy that can genuinely
move things on the Middle East or

regarding lots of different fractious
issues? I mean, fractious, fracking,

fractious.

Fracking is a fractious issue, but
there are many others as well. I mean,

the first thing I’d say in response to
that is the Middle East is just a really

complicated constellation of issues.
It’s often described as 'a' issue,

but it really is many interlocking
areas. So Iran, Saudi Arabia,

Israel, Palestine and the US has
policies on all of these areas,

and they are often difficult to reconcile.

I’m not a foreign policy expert,

but one thing that I have noted is that
there are these windows of opportunity

that do arise in the
Middle East and the region.

So I think back to 1993
when Clinton convened very

famous deliberations between
Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat,

and we looked really close to a
long-term bargain at that point.

And even just a few months ago,

so prior to October 7th last year,

so basically 13 months ago,

it seemed that the Biden administration
was on the verge of a massive,

hugely significant bargain that would
involve the normalising of relations

between Israel and Saudi
Arabia on the one hand,

and the recognition of a
Palestinian state on the other hand,

and then of course,

the horrible attacks on October
the 7th derailed all of that.

All of that is just to say that
there are these moments during which

the possibilities of peace seem
more ripe than at other times.

And we’re now in one of those other
times when US policy seems to be mainly

reactive,

trying to reduce the pain
and the suffering and the

cost politically,

and the implications for US
interests around the region

and beyond. And getting that right
in a region with so many players,

so many interests, so much
volatility is very difficult.

And I think the Biden administration was
actually doing fairly well in pulling

together this grand bargain, and now its
Middle East policy looks like a mess.

Certainly does. And that,

to go back to the question you asked
me is not a benefit for Harris at all,

especially, and I mean,

it’s really unfortunate in some respects
that this is happening right now

because both parties will be
very keen for gas prices to go up

before the election. In the
case of the Republicans,

they’d be very happy to see that happen.

And so the stability of the oil
supplies probably one of the really

important driving factors at
the moment for policymaking.

Can I just add one more point there?

Another important factor here is that
the actors in the Middle East in their

region are observing and trying
to influence the US election too.

They are invested in that
outcome. We know, for example,

that Benjamin Netanyahu was

impressed by Donald Trump’s moving
of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv

to Jerusalem and pulling
and forcing Iran out of a

bargain to try and bring it back
into the international community and

an arrangement that Obama
initially negotiated.

So it’s not impossible to imagine
a situation where he might prefer

Donald Trump back in the
White House than Harris,

and maybe that affects his thinking.

Certainly all the other players
in the region have the US election

as part of the context
they’re trying to influence.

So American policymakers are not
trying to shape the Middle East in

a one way direction.

This is a two directional complicated
relationship involving actors who

are trying to influence each other.

And even multi-directional. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Well said. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Generally,

how important is foreign policy
in presidential campaigns?

Can you generalise about that or does it
really vary from campaign to campaign?

Yeah. Well, we certainly can generalise.

Political scientists have done a lot
of work on trying to understand the

importance of the foreign dimension
of politics as compared with

domestic dimension. There’s a

very famous thesis by a political
scientist by the name of Aaron Wildavsky.

It’s decades old, but he
speaks of the two presidencies,

the one that operates in foreign policy
and the one that operates in domestic

policy. And traditionally, the foreign
policy one has been more powerful.

The domestic policy one has been weaker
because of constraints in Congress.

But when it comes to elections,

basically domestic policy seems to
matter a lot more than foreign policy.

So presidents are really
powerful in foreign policy,

and they like to trump and parade
their foreign policy achievements.

But whenever voters go to the polls,

they are typically thinking about domestic
issues. And this is why, for example,

George HW Bush loses the 1992

election despite winning in all reasonable

criteria, and by all dimensions,

a very successfully prosecuted
war in the Middle East.

... and the entire Cold
War, you might say.

You might say certainly, he was part

part of the administration
during that time,

part of the Reagan administration
when the Berlin Wall came down.

And yet because

taxes went up in a way that the
Democratic Party could very visibly

exploit during that
time. Clinton, of course,

who’s an incredibly
charismatic campaigner,

is able to defeat Bush.
And it’s a great, I think,

powerful illustration from more
general point that American

elections turn more on domestic
factors, domestic dynamics,

especially economic ones traditionally,

but perhaps cultural ones more these
days than they do foreign policy.

Thank you. That’s a really interesting
answer to the account. And in fact,

the wall came down during
George HW Bush’s presidency.

Yes.

But it feels like it was
a Reagan achievement, so

it wasn’t just that administration.

Staying with the Middle East. Clare,

do you see important differences in how
that conflict is affecting politics and

society in Australia as
compared with the United States?

I think we haven’t quite
seen the sort of size of the

impact, perhaps because we’re not in
the middle of an election campaign

that we’ve seen in the United States.
But actually the effects in terms of,

for example, campus protests

and the mobilisation of a lot of young
people and a very sizable population

here,

both Jewish and either Arab or

Muslim - and/or Muslim - means, of course,

people are massively affected here.

A lot of people are migrants themselves
or are one generation removed from the

Middle East and have family
still there are directly

affected by this conflict. But yeah,

I don’t see,

do you see sort of the larger effect in
Australian politics that we’re seeing in

the US?

Yeah, I would agree with you that
it doesn’t quite seem as intense,

but I think it’s been a real strain
on social cohesion in Australia.

I think the United States is already
more febrile when it comes to matters of

social cohesion,

but I think it’s certainly caused deep

divisions in Australian society, which
will take time and effort to resolve.

Well, if that’s possible.

Certainly while the wars continue
to rage on in the Middle East,

I don’t think that will
be possible. Obviously,

the principle victims and all
of this are those who are there,

but Western societies have paid a price
in terms of their social fabric as well.

So let’s return to the United States
and try and bring quite a bit of this

discussion around race and its impact
on presidential campaigning together.

Trump has recently said truly awful

things about the people he
calls illegal immigrants.

It started in this campaign
with the Haitians in the Midwest

who were allegedly
eating the cats and dogs.

And then it really escalated maybe
10 days ago when he said that

illegal immigrants will come
into your kitchen and will

slash your throat, cut your throat. Okay.

So going to the dog whistling,

illegal immigrants,

when you use that phrase in the United
States generally doesn’t mean British,

white British people who’ve
overstayed their visas, does it?

I think that’s a fairly
consistent and clear dog whistle.

So some of this in this campaign has
obviously been focused specifically on

these Haitians in the Midwest, but
the perennial issue is of course,

immigration across the US border with
Mexico when the vice presidential

hopefuls,

Tim Walz for the Democrats and JD Vance
for the Republicans debated last week,

this topic came up. How do you think
the debate has fared on this topic?

And in general?

I thought it was a very
interesting debate.

JD Vance and Waltz are both personable,
affable, they communicate effectively,

and I think they’re both assets
for their respective tickets,

though in rather different ways.

So Walz clearly broadens Harris’s appeal.

He has an avuncular style that
I think that folksiness has a

long history and a deep

appeal in the American electorate.
JD Vance, on the other hand,

is kind of the intellectual
policy wonk of Trumpism.

Sorry, I’m just going to have to
take a moment. You’re right. I mean,

that’s bang on. That’s
how he positioned himself.

And he’s a very slick debater, and he
knows how to pivot and weave and duck,

and he’s quick on his feet and
he communicates with real clarity

and a sense of vigour and vision.

So I think if you just listen to them,
he’s a, he’s very effective communicator.

And on immigration,

I think he has a really refined version

of Trump’s instincts.

So a few questions in the debate
circled around immigration,

and he had some good answers in the
sense that the answers did quite a lot

to make,

what on the basis of what Trump has said
is a fairly radical policy seem much

more coherent and
sensible. So for example,

the interviewer asked JD Vance, well,

what does this immigration
policy look like in practice?

Trump has basically said a few
bombastic things, tweeted a bit,

but hasn’t really told us many details.
JD Vance explained that it means getting

criminals out of the country if
they’re illegally in the country,

not that controversial. It means making
it harder for people in the country who

are undocumented to gain jobs. Again,
not that controversial. And well,

within the parameters of ordinary
American political debate,

he said very little and avoided
questions around splitting up families

and the use of the
military and aggressive law

enforcement to actually deport people.
Had very little to say about that.

So I think he was very good at downplaying
what could be the most controversial

aspects and very good at
playing up, if you like,

the elements that fall within
the American mainstream. So a

very sort of skillful way
of spinning what could

or may not turn out to be a hugely radical
policy when it comes to immigration

from Mexico.

Right, because Trump has foreshadowed in
the past that he would take a look at,

as he likes to say,

even the 14th amendment
to the Constitution that
guarantees that if you’re born

in the United States, you are a citizen
of the United States. I mean, that was,

again,

something that happened after the Civil
War to resolve the question of what

should happen to formerly enslaved people?
Should they be sent back to Africa,

which is what a lot of people wanted,
or would they stay in the United States?

And that was one of those quite radical
reforms for its time. And he says,

oh, we’ll take a look at that.

But even since that enactment,

there have been deportations,

mass deportations of people
from the United States.

There used to be trains that went across
the country to take people to the coast

and send them off by ship. It is not
unprecedented. There were the camps

during the last Trump
administration, you just mentioned,

the separation of families that
were an absolute humanitarian

disaster. Yeah.

Yeah.

The border’s obviously been a sore,

a real boil that both parties have
had to grapple with. And of course,

Trump talks a lot about immigration,

but one of the interesting observations
is that both parties were very close to

a bipartisan agreement on this until
Trump purposefully torpedoed it.

And indeed,

he probably torpedoed it because he
wanted to campaign aggressively on this

issue.

And he campaigns aggressively on this
issue because America is ripe at the

moment for this bigger debate
about what it means to be American.

And this identity conflict,

which has racial undertones is
at the heart of this campaign,

is the heart is at the heart of
the MAGA movement more generally.

And Trump has exploited
and developed and nurtured

that division and that cleavage,
which is reshaping American politics.

I’d even say it’s not just race at
the moment, it’s also about gender.

Yeah, I agree with you.

Yeah.

So the backlash against
transgenderism particularly has led

to or has fuelled that these abortion bans

and the idea that actually
maybe women are not also,

or people who are not men are
also not perhaps American in the

sense of that kind of idealised
person in maybe Vance’s imagination or

Trump’s.

And just to double down on that point,

women performing certain roles or not
performing other roles, right, tradwives.

Exactly, they’re un-American, and
there’s also, I think another,

Sorry, the tradwives are American, the
other ones are not. Yes. Yes, precisely.

And I think that sits alongside
another debate around morals.

And I think that there is
coming from Vance, a real

emphasis on moralising
America and how America’s

values have drifted and
that there’s something,

there’s an anchoring in certain
traditional values that is America.

So it’s not just about the people,
it’s what they do, how they behave,

what they believe,

and who they take as their role models.

That is, I think,

at stake and what gets Vance very
excited and what he wants to campaign on.

And doesn’t he look like a
terrific choice for Trump now?

After last week’s debate, I mean,

he’s really pulled back from the couch
jokes to show us what he can achieve,

I think, which is the sort of
smoother face, if you like,

of the MAGA movement backed by his idols,

or at least his former employers, huge
amounts of money from Silicon Valley.

And I think also he
demonstrated his loyalty.

So he was asked toward the end of the
debate about the January the 6th

insurrection,

and whether he would do
what Mike Pence did in

ultimately choosing country over
Donald Trump whenever the test of

loyalty came and he gave a dissembling

duck and weave kind of answer
that left me thinking, well,

I’m really not sure what he would do

were he in Mike Pence’s shoes in a
few years time? I’m really uncertain.

I think he would do whatever he
thought was best for Vance in 2028.

What do you reckon?

Possibly, but even that’s a
complicated question. True,

because I don’t think that, well,

and certainly I hope that in 2028,

someone who breaks fundamental
democratic norms and

tries to ensure that someone who lost an
election stays in office would stand a

chance in a future election,

I hope that they would pay a
significant political cost for that.

But I think that Donald Trump
prizes personal loyalty and

Vance is prepared to give
that without condition.

And I think many traditional

Republicans pledge loyalty

but I think when it comes to crunch,

time would choose party over
Trump, nation over Trump.

Maybe Vance would choose
Trump, and if you like,

Trumpism over party or nation.

And hope to continue the
sort of colonisation of the
Republican Party. Actually,

they haven’t been colonised at
all. They’ve gone willingly, but.

Of.

The Republican party.

And the remaking of the Republican Party,

I think one of the big debates we
don’t have time for it in this episode

is the future of the Republican Party,

which I believe is massively at
stake following this election,

because whatever happens,
Donald Trump’s time

as the pinnacle of this party will pass.

And then I think it’s a
very open question as to

where the party goes next.

Well, indeed, in fact,
if he loses the election,

sentencing in New York happens on the
26th of November, I think. Of course.

So three weeks later, he’s
unlikely apparently to be
sentenced to a prison term.

It’s because it’s a first offence,
although there are 34 of them.

Yes, that’s also true.
But who knows, right?

The exit from politics could be
swift, very, very steep and

dramatic yes. Lead to
incarceration potentially.

Well, that is a good note I
reckon for us to finish on.

Thank you all for listening or watching
and come back again next week where we

will be discussing, let’s
give ourselves another out,

just, there might be an October
surprise we can’t resist,

but we will be chatting about
presidential scandals. Thank you.

Thank you for your interest in
Australian and American politics.

Please consider forwarding the pod to
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