visited link 50b 0a 7ac 0ea 2 4cfc 8425 676d 76… A subscriber exclusive. link graphic Subscriber Exclusive link graphic Inside The New Yorker link graphic A behind the scenes conversation between Susan B. Glasser and her editor, David Rohde, about this link graphic year’s election, its defining issues, and what lies ahead. link graphic Susan B. Glasser link Susan B. Glasser Staff writer, The New Yorker link graphic David Rohde link David Rohde Executive editor, link newyorker dot com With two months to go before Election Day, the 2020 campaign has already secured its place as one of the most chaotic and consequential in American history. Amid a pandemic, mass unemployment, and sweeping protests for racial justice, the Presidential race has both driven and, occasionally, been eclipsed by the torrent of news this year. Observing from the epicenter has been Susan B. Glasser, whose weekly link newyorker dot com column, link Letter from Trump’s Washington , and exhaustively reported link magazine pieces have made sense of the chaos originating in the White House. For the past three years, Glasser has captured the defining moments of the Trump Presidency, from link firings by tweet to the link President’s impeachment trial to the link deadly contagion besetting the nation dot Glasser’s link prescient link pieces help readers interpret the noise, and discern what to fear and what to ignore. A former editor of Politico and Foreign Policy, Glasser link draws context from four years as a Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, where she later served as the editor of the national desk and Outlook section. At The New Yorker, where I edit her work, Glasser is part of an expanded team covering the election and its defining issues. Subscribers have unlimited access to her pieces, along with the rest of The New Yorker’s political reporting and commentary, on link newyorker dot com and the New Yorker app, both of which will feature analysis and live results on Election Day. Glasser and her colleagues also share their expertise on The New Yorker’s link Politics and More podcast, and in link On the Trail , a weekly newsletter focussed on the campaign. I spoke with Susan earlier this week, asking about the campaign so far and what she sees ahead. David Rohde Last week marked the end of the 2020 political Conventions. Were they what you expected? Did they change the race in any meaningful way? I first attended one of the Conventions back in 1992, when Democrats met in New York and nominated Bill Clinton. The excitement then was Ross Perot dropping out at the end of the Convention, although he later got back in the race. In truth, Conventions have been dead as a news event for a few decades, persisting as a combination of TV show and endless lobbyist funded social events. Journalists loved to hate them, but also loved to go because they could schmooze and see all their friends. Rarely in recent history have Conventions meaningfully shifted outcomes the last contested Convention was the 1976 Republican one, where Gerald Ford pulled out a win against Ronald Reagan but went on to lose that fall. (I learned endless fascinating details about Ford’s floor fight for link my new biography of Jim Baker , who ran it.) Yet, even devoid of suspense, most Conventions in recent decades have provided a big, potentially defining moment on the national stage for nominees and aspiring candidates. (Barack Obama in 2004, for example.) I suspect the future will look more like the covid 19 Conventions of 2020 than we realize, with some or all of them virtual and national, like the Democrats’ well received roll call vote. (Rhode Island calamari!) I still think the Conventions provide useful benchmarks and clarifying events for the parties and their nominees: look back and watch Donald Trump at the 2016 Convention and then last week, when he link used the White link House as a prop in a way no other President dared, and it tells you much about where we are in our politics. Or link consider Joe Biden’s speech , a crucial test for him, or any challenger, not only to show the incumbent’s weaknesses but to prove himself a viable alternative. But, in 2020, almost everyone’s mind is already made up about Trump. The days of the seventeen point post Convention swing from Michael Dukakis to George H. W. Bush are long gone. link 5bda 41733f 92a 40f 7d 4e 3f 78C 56ea 9… link Newsletter: On the Trail Get weekly insights on the 2020 election from The New Yorker’s Politics team. link Sign up now Based on the campaign so far, what do you expect to see in the weeks before and after Election Day? Fear, anger, and division are what got Trump into the White House, and so far he’s shown every sign that those are the things he’ll campaign on in order to stay there. Trump has never for a single day had an approval rating above fifty per cent unlike any other President, since the polls began and he and the Republicans have largely given up on persuading undecided voters. Instead, they will focus, once again, on motivating and mobilizing their own committed base. And then there is the issue of voter suppression during a pandemic that will surely diminish in person turnout, even as no one knows how the system will cope with the unprecedented need for mail in ballots. Expect earlier early voting than ever before, and an Election Night that may look more like Election Week or Month. Your weekly column is called Letter from Trump’s Washington, but you’ve lived in D dot C. since well before he took office. How has the political culture there changed in the past four years, and has it changed the feel of the city itself? Disruption is what brought Trump to the Presidency, and he has delivered a lot of it to D dot C. I can’t think of a time when Democratic Washington had less in common with Republican Washington, or when they were less on speaking terms. And then there is just the nuttiness of trying to cover this moment: the rage tweeting, the nasty nicknames and schoolyard bullying from the President; the incredible flip flopping by Republicans who called Trump a kook and a loser but now clamor to play golf with him; the turmoil, backstabbing, and enormous turnover within the most powerful institutions of government; link a flood of lying that has tested the press and the public’s ability to process all the misinformation. In a series of early morning tweets may be the most dreaded words I’ll remember from this era. There have been so many Pinocchios handed out by the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column Trump is at more than twenty thousand lies, false statements, or misleading claims, and counting that they may have to retire them. Still, for journalists it’s a clarifying moment. No previous American President called the press link the enemies of the people , a horrible phrase that always reminds me, as a former Moscow correspondent, that enemy of the people was the formal accusation the Soviets used to send millions to the Gulag. But this period has also been a reminder of the importance of the job we have to do. None of this is like anything we’ve seen before from any President, in either Party. link 5bda 41733f 92a 40f 7d 4e 3f 78C 16154… link Podcast: Politics and More Enjoy a weekly discussion about politics, hosted by The New Yorker’s executive editor, Dorothy Wickenden. link Listen now In one of your magazine pieces, you profiled a link dissident Republican who opposes Trump’s reëlection. What do you think will happen to the G dot O dot P. and Washington if he wins again? As Trump accepted his nomination last week, his son in law and White House adviser Jared Kushner told the Times that the G dot O dot P. truly is Trump’s now, and that his hostile takeover of the Party is complete. Four more years of Trump would move the Party even farther in the direction of a personality driven family business, with no room for dissent, which was the image that the President showcased at the Convention. (A shockingly high percentage of the speakers were blood relatives and paid staff, as John Mc Cain used to joke.) The Republicans even skipped writing a new Party platform, preferring merely to endorse Trump’s second term agenda, whatever it turns out to be. Given that Trump has attacked previous Party orthodoxies, from support for free trade to skepticism toward dictators like Vladimir Putin, the main thing the Party stands for at the moment is the President himself. Many Never Trumpers, already an isolated minority, will likely leave the Party altogether. But loyalty in politics is a fickle thing. As long as we have a two term limit, Trump will find his power waning as he enters lame duck status and aspiring successors fight to emerge as his heir. Besides, making predictions is pretty hazardous right now. A year ago, the allegations that led to Trump’s impeachment were just emerging, and I sure did not think we would approach the election with impeachment already forgotten and everything else overshadowed by a deadly pandemic and economic crisis. If Biden wins, how will Washington change? Do you believe that Trumpism has permanently changed American politics? First of all, this is the post 2016 political world we’re living in, and I’ll believe a Biden victory when I see it. If it happens, I do think that Trumpism will live on in some form. For the past four years, forty per cent of Americans have supported Trump no matter what and, win or lose, his final percentage of the 2020 vote is very likely to be even higher than that. Those people will not disappear, even if their candidate does. Expect a lot of I never liked the guyism from Republican establishment types as they seek to rewrite history and pretend they did not eagerly accommodate Trump. Many others will continue to use the Trump playbook in the scramble to secure loyalty and votes from his base. For the Democrats, a reckoning looms as well, whether now or four years from now; Biden promises a restoration of sorts, but it’s hard to imagine that it will be possible to turn the clock back to November 7, 2016, and resume the Obama years. Will a new generation of leaders emerge in a Biden Administration? Will a familiar cast of characters return to government? If Biden wins, Republicans on Capitol Hill, presumably in the minority and even more reliant on hardcore Trump loyalists, are not going to make it easy for him, not any more than they did for Obama. link Read Letter from Trump’s Washington link View this e mail in your browser. You received this e mail because you subscribe to The New Yorker. Questions about your subscription? 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