Good day citizens.
Good day podcast listeners,
and have you voted?
Welcome to this week's Thomas Jefferson 
Hour podcast.
I voted.
I did too.
I voted at 7:04
AM.
Yeah.
I was about eight,
8:00
and I had my little white optimist club 
of Bismarck I have voted sticker.
Did you,
So you had to show ID.
Of course.
And then they asked me questions.
They did to me too.
So that's the new North Dakota election 
law.
Yeah.
It's funny because North Dakota is the 
only state in the union where you don't 
have to preregister.
That's my understanding.
Right.
But we have recently moved in the 
direction of voter ID and more stringent
voter identification systems,
more questions at the polls and as you 
know,
Native Americans felt that they were 
being actively disenfranchised by some 
of the recent changes.
I think you'd have to be pretty naive to
not think that they were.
I'm just saying that these,
I'll just say it straight out,
voter identification laws are inevitably
attempts to squelch voter participation,
Suppress it.
And they are suppressive.
I don't think it's any stretch to say 
that they,
the legislation passed by the Republican
held legislature in North Dakota 
designed this law to make it more 
difficult for American Indians to vote.
And part of the reason for that is that 
the Democratic candidate for Senate last
election won by less than 3000 votes and
American Indians played a huge role in 
that.
They did,
you know.
There were also attempts.
It's really embarrassing to me that 
they,
that that's done in our little.
Anywhere that's done bothers me and 
especially here,
but also because of the Dakota access 
pipeline controversy,
there was a fair amount of reprisal 
legislation proposed and in some cases 
passed during the 2017 legislative 
session in our own beloved North Dakota,
which again is a chilling and deeply 
saddening fact,
that here's a people who largely 
ignored,
who got deeply concerned about a 
pipeline.
People came from all over the world to 
show solidarity with that.
And one of the results was that the 
state legislature of North Dakota 
seriously debated some reprisal 
legislation that Jefferson would say it 
was worthy of the ninth century.
You call it what it is and it was 
racist,
but that's not what the show is about 
this week.
But it is about elections.
It is.
And the good news is that more people 
voted in this midterm election than ever
before in American history.
That's all great.
The good news is that lots of young 
people were elected to Congress and to 
other positions,
including an unprecedented number of 
young,
really extraordinary women that are not 
just,
It's not like your grandfather's Buick.
These are not your Margaret Thatcher,
kind of young women.
These are really strong,
passionate,
exciting.
I think as you said in the show,
they're not like Diane Feinstein.
Whom I love.
You apologized.
I admire her deeply,
but she's another generation.
This is,
these are young women in their twenties 
and thirties who are like,
we're mad as hell.
We're not taking it anymore.
And they're willing to express their 
points of view.
I mean,
to think that a Muslim woman was elected
to the US House of representatives from 
Minnesota is such a delightful fact,
And there's that quote
What she said,
too.
Oh,
yeah.
Remember what she said?
Minnesota welcomes immigrants.
Not only welcomes.
Not only welcomes immigrants,
but.
We send them to Congress.
Right.
She couldn't have said it better.
Tweet that.
There's a quote somewhere in the show 
about,
from Jefferson,
that I found,
him saying,
you know,
you have to recognize when you're too 
old and get out of the way.
That it's time to let the younger take 
over and that's what we're seeing here.
And that's good.
That's great.
That should make us all optimistic.
You and I are fossils.
Before we go to the show,
I'm wondering,
do you have anything you'd like to 
inform our listeners about?
Indeed.
So I've been.
What a setup.
It's great though because listen 
everyone.
Shakespeare without tears.
Water and the West,
the two humanities retreats at Lochsa 
lodge west of Missoula,
still a few places in each of them.
I want to fill them because I think this
is so much fun.
This is like the book club you always 
wanted and it's one of the great places 
in the world to be in January.
I know that might seem counterintuitive,
but it's mild and the snow is beautiful,
it's like a Currier and Ives print of 
what a lodge in Montana and Idaho should
be like in January.
And then,
uh,
the second through the eighth of March,
Steinbeck's California.
A second time we've done that.
So those are all out there and then 
we're going to France in the fall of 
October,
2019.
These cultural tours,
you can find out more about at 
Jeffersonhour.com,
but do seriously consider coming.
I am so excited about them.
I've been reading the books,
David and I now have four Shakespeare 
plays to read in the next month and I 
couldn't be happier.
Speaking of books,
one we mentioned on the show this week 
that I really want to promote.
This is strictly me because it's a 
favorite of mine.
You love this book for some reason.
Michael Lewis,
the Fifth Risk.
I have it in my hands,
it's a slender book.
As I say in the show,
it starts out and there's a little Trump
bashing.
It's easy.
But really I walked away from that being
so optimistic about our country and all 
the things it quietly does.
The millions of bureaucrats that are 
unrecognized and unrewarded.
It's a good book.
So I'm lobbying.
What's the risk?
You have to read the book.
Okay.
So Jon Meacham has been all over the 
media lately and he has a book which you
greatly admired too.
Have you read that yet?
Oh,
you know,
that's a good one.
I would happily borrow that to you.
The theme I think of the book is,
we always get through this.
I suspect after you've read this,
you'll want to add a copy to your 
library.
Well,
I suppose you want.
I would give it to you except there's 
like four or five of my friends that I 
would like to have read this.
Yeah well good luck getting it back.
So.
Okay.
So the cultural tours are coming January
13th or 18th,
which is water in the west,
January 19th to 24th,
which is Shakespeare.
Then two through eight,
March,
which is Steinbeck's California.
France in the fall.
This is where you go into your baritone.
Well,
I don't know,
but I,
you know,
I don't want to lose people.
If you like the Thomas Jefferson Hour.
That's pretty good.
You could do it.
And you want to see this program 
continue,
know that we do not take any personal 
money from it.
We do it as a sort of labor of love.
I can never say that quite right.
You do that really well.
We believe passionately that the 
Jeffersonian viewpoint is one that is 
missing from our national culture.
You're way better at this than me.
And we want people to come here because 
this is a place where there is humor and
civility and good sense and people can 
hear our friendship as we talk these 
things through week after week.
You as the semipermanent guest host of 
the Thomas Jefferson Hour.
You as the creator.
And we are so pleased with that.
And this program does actually depend 
upon listeners like you.
It does.
So if you can help us,
know that we are not using it to play 
Black Jack at the casino,
not using it to go on trips to Vegas,
that we,
the money that people contribute to this
program helps to keep alive what I think
is a little of the enlightenment spirit 
in this country.
And so thank you and you know how to 
find us.
We couldn't be more appreciative if we 
tried.
When I think of the people who like this
program and admire like our friend 
Crisler of Nashville,
Tennessee,
it's deeply moving.
I know it moves you too,
to think that there are people who plan 
their week so that they can listen to 
two knuckleheads in North Dakota.
I just can't accept and believe that.
They do though.
You're really good at this.
You should take over on the pitch
You told me I should never pitch,
but I'm going to do it if you don't,
because this matters to me and what I'm 
thinking about.
Look,
we're living in a desperate time.
You can't turn on Fox or MSNBC without 
thinking,
oh my goodness,
this country,
whatever your politics,
just,
oh my goodness,
how are we going to claw our way 
through?
We'll be fine.
You can read all the Jon Meacham books 
you want.
But I know that people are edgy.
This country is edgy and now the gun 
violence is just spiking everywhere.
Bomb threats and,
it's just nuts.
Okay,
you're really good at this but wrap.
That's enough.
But people need a harbor of serene 
discourse with grammar and complete 
sentences.
Not reduced to talking points,
not taking our cues from Rachel or from 
Sean or from Rush or you name it.
That's what this program tries to do,
but also to keep it in the lens of 
Thomas Jefferson.
So if you like what we're doing,
please help us in any way that you can.
And most of all keep listening to the 
Thomas Jefferson Hour tell everyone,
you know.
And with that,
I will also say that,
you know,
the past couple of weeks,
during the pitch we said,
you know,
could go to Jeffersonhour.com.
We're really proud of the website.
I went there the other day.
I couldn't believe the stuff that our 
webmaster puts on it.
It's so good.
He has let us both know that the traffic
at that website has gone up 36 percent.
He gets the credit.
Go to Jeffersonhour.com
and find everything you want to know 
about the cultural tours,
how to support the show and a lot of 
other content as well.
Indeed.
But let's go to it because I thought 
this was fun.
No incident analysis.
Eric Sevareid once said,
incident analysis is always dicey just 
two days after the election.
We're trying to bring some wisdom to it.
I hope it helps,
whether people agree or disagree with 
our analysis.
I hope it helps them get the 
conversation started that they want to 
have about what does amount to one of 
the most important elections of our 
time.
So here we go to the Thomas Jefferson 
Hour podcast edition.
Thank you all.
Good day citizens.
And welcome to the Thomas Jefferson 
Hour,
your weekly conversation with President 
Thomas Jefferson and your weekly 
conversation with the gentleman seated 
across from me now,
the creator of the Thomas Jefferson,
our Mr Clay Jenkinson and Clay,
I was hoping we could talk elections 
this week.
Well,
we've just had one.
Normally midterm elections are not that 
spectacular
and they often don't get much publicity 
in American life.
But in recent years with our 24/7 cable 
media and so on,
and the really profound factionalism and
tribalism that has overtaken American 
life,
these midterm elections become 
particularly important.
And this time the president,
Donald Trump,
has said all across America,
I'm on the ballot.
Not technically,
but this is about me.
This is your chance to endorse what I've
done or repudiate it,
but think of me as being on the ballot.
And so that of course lifted the 
election into a still higher level of 
national attention,
It's kind of a unique thing.
And I was hoping that we could talk a 
bit about that,
what happened in the election this week.
And you could help us see it through a 
bit of a Jeffersonian lens.
Well,
let me say this,
that nobody ever expected the presidency
to become as powerful and as important 
as it has become.
This is something that evolved over the 
course of American history.
And several presidents.
The great moment for this was actually 
Theodore Roosevelt,
who inherited the country when McKinley 
was assassinated in September of 1901.
And Roosevelt looked at the world,
he was a brilliant man,
maybe the most intellectually prepared 
president in our history.
And he said,
look,
this country is now too big,
too powerful,
too densely populated,
too urban,
too industrial,
to just be Jefferson Jackson system that
we had where nothing much has to get 
done.
He said,
there's no longer really a place for 
legislative supremacy,
that we need a stronger executive.
We need a stronger national government.
And he was of course quite willing to 
fill what he took to be that void.
And he became really the inventor of the
modern presidency.
He carried the country sometimes kicking
and screaming into the 20th century,
the American Century.
But his view was the legislative branch 
is going to have to subordinate itself 
to the necessary power of the president,
the executive branch.
And in some regards,
Roosevelt was America's first king.
I know he wasn't a king,
but he began to behave like one.
And since World War II,
I suppose beginning with FDR,
his fifth cousin,
the presidency has grown stronger and 
stronger and stronger and stronger until
today,
it's almost the whole business of 
government.
And so Donald Trump becomes president in
2016 and 17 and this election,
the midterm election in the middle of 
his first term,
it sort of was a chance for the American
people to step back and say,
how are we doing here?
Uh,
do we.
He had a republican house.
He had a Republican Senate,
what is regarded as a Republican or 
Conservative court system,
and obviously a Republican conservative 
executive.
So all the branches appeared to be lined
up to fulfill the will of the 
conservative Republican platform.
And so then Trump invited us,
President Trump invited us to look upon 
this as kind of a vote of confidence or 
no confidence.
And here's what we know.
Well,
we know two things,
number one,
huge numbers of people voted.
We should point out that we're recording
this program on November eighth
So we don't know the outcome of some key
Senate and house challenges and 
governorships also,
but gigantic turnout.
So on both sides,
it wasn't just a blue wave or the 
liberal progressives or the people that 
call themselves the resistance.
It was a massive turnout all around.
That's number one.
And number two,
if you look at this,
try to look at this
objectively,
the party in power usually loses a fair 
number of seats during a midterm 
election.
That's more often the case than not.
And as we go to broadcast about 30 
pickups were done by the Democratic 
Party in the House of Representatives,
might be 24 or five,
but somewhere in that zone.
That is not a dramatic shift.
It's about average.
That's a fairly normal shift for a 
midterm election.
So you know,
so many people that I know,
David and I think you too,
thought of this election as quote 
unquote,
the most important in our lifetime.
And this is the moment and so on.
It turns out it was a fairly typical 
midterm election.
One thing that I took away from it is 
that both parties called Tuesday's 
midterm elections a victory and they're 
both right and they're both wrong.
Democrats,
they want to use their newly gained 
control of the house to push what they 
call positive legislative moves,
their agenda.
On infrastructure,
on tax policy,
on healthcare.
And obviously to use it as a check upon 
the executive.
At least,
supervision,
oversight committees looking at the work
of the cabinet,
looking at corruption in the government.
Looking at Trump's own behavior.
The Democrats were pretty careful not to
say impeachment,
but there will be definitely an attempt 
at greater oversight of the executive 
branch.
Which really is what the you know.
Which was what intended.
if you're independent,
Republican,
Democrat,
I mean,
that's what the congress' job is 
supposed to be.
The whole point of.
So going back to the principles of the 
founders,
the idea was what Adams said once,
checks and balances my dear Jefferson,
checks and balances,
and that's exactly what it's supposed to
do.
You don't want unified government very 
often.
Maybe during war or a time of 
international emergency,
but typically you want there to be 
counter balancing forces in your country
that question,
is that a good foreign policy?
Is that good tax policy?
Should we,
in fact,
close the borders.
Should we throw the doors open at the 
borders?
There should be another entity,
either another branch of government or 
another party of individuals that 
challenges the orthodoxy of the party in
power.
This is central to the American idea of 
good government and so whenever you have
one party rule where the dominant party 
is overwhelmingly capable of sort of 
doing whatever it wants,
that's not good for the country,
whether it's a leftist Democratic Party 
or a rightist Conservative Party.
From what I hear you saying is democracy
is awkward,
it's ugly,
it's messy,
but.
Slow,
frustrating.
This is part of it.
So the Republicans regarded the result 
of,
a victory for them.
They called their increased Senate 
majority a huge success and they're 
right.
I'll tell you one thing that,
you know,
if you think of the last year,
especially,
where you've had these pretty serious 
controversies over justices and judges.
Senate does that.
The House plays no role in this and 
confirmation.
It was difficult for the Trump senate to
get judges approved,
because their majority was so narrow,
and everyone recalls the Kavanaugh 
hearings where we looked to one or two 
senators,
wondering if they would break with the 
majority and hold up that nomination.
Now with the gains that the Republican 
Party has had in the election of 2018,
it will be much easier for the 
Republican party to install in 
judgeships and in the Supreme Court the 
people of its choice.
It'll be much,
much harder to contemplate that there 
will be breaks from the majority.
We should expect that they will reshape 
the federal judiciary.
They've already done it to a large 
degree.
Now it'll be without challenge.
But this will be for generations to 
come.
It'll affect.
And you know what?
From arbitration to.
Reproductive health,
to money in politics,
money in elections,
to same sex marriages and so on.
But you know the answer to that.
The Jeffersonian answer to that is,
elections matter,
you know,
here's what I was thinking about it.
You had 435 house seats contested,
every one of them.
You had 35 Senate seats.
It's usually less than that.
Thirty four or 33,
but 35 this time,
governorships.
In many states,
state legislatures all across this 
country,
mayors,
school boards,
county commissions,
sheriffs,
you name it.
So if you add it up,
David,
all of the elections that happened on 
November 6th,
2018 in America,
it would come to hundreds,
many hundreds.
You have a population of 330 million.
This is a way that the whole system is 
designed to distill their will.
You let the people give their will,
voice,
in elections,
and therefore elections matter,
and the results of this one were not a 
blue wave,
they were not a profound repudiation of 
Trump and Trumpism.
It was kind of a typical midterm 
election,
but my point is elections matter and the
American people solidified the Senate 
for Donald Trump and the Republicans,
which means that they're going to have a
chance to do what the Republicans have 
been wanting to do for a very,
very long time,
which is to install a great number of 
originalists,
strict constructionists and more 
conservative justices and judges in the 
American federal court system.
That's how it works.
And the left and the Democrats can cry 
foul or this does not meet the 
expectations of the American people 
have,
blah,
blah,
blah.
The fact is elections matter and now the
Senate has a solid,
almost undefeatable majority with 
respect to appointments to the courts.
We go back to the.
That's what I would hope to talk about a
bit this week is,
you know,
as you say,
elections matter.
Well,
what's it going to do in the house and 
what's it going to do in the Senate a 
bit more specifically and looking from a
Jeffersonianion eye on this as well.
You know,
can I ask,
can I raise a kind of a little troubling
note from a Jeffersonian point of view.
Please.
In the 2016 election,
Donald Trump won quite decisively in the
electoral college,
but he lost the popular vote.
Mrs Clinton had I think 3 million more 
votes than he did in this election where
you have it just localized all over the 
country.
I believe the Democrats got 6 million 
more votes nationally than the 
Republicans,
and so we're moving into this moment 
where people are going to begin to 
question the indirect nature of our 
democracy.
You think so?
Really?
Yes.
Because I think that,
what if Mrs Clinton had won the popular 
vote by 9 million votes and still lost 
in the electoral college.
At some point,
this becomes a real
problem,
that the will of the people,
if it means anything is majority rule.
If you find a mechanism,
and I'm not saying the Republicans have 
done that,
this is built into our constitution,
but if you find a mechanism that can 
thwart majority rule,
when it's that pronounced,
6 million is a lot of votes in this 
country.
At some point people are going to say,
this system is not distilling the will 
of the people very well.
If there are 6 million more people on 
the Democrat side and yet the 
Republicans are winning,
that's probably something worth at least
debating about how we distill the will 
of a third of a billion people,
is my point.
Well,
once you open that discussion,
there's,
it can go on a long,
long time.
Right now we need to take a short break 
and we'll return to this conversation 
about the 2018 midterm elections in just
a moment.
You're listening to the Thomas Jefferson
Hour.
Welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson 
Hour,
your weekly conversation with President 
Thomas Jefferson or the gentleman seated
across from me now,
the man who portrays President Jefferson
when he's here.
I voted.
Did you?
I did too,
got my sticker.
I wanted to put a little purple on my 
thumb.
Just like,
felt,
remember when Iraq did that?
Their first election after all the 
chaos.
It felt like,
you know,
if you're serious that
you want the country to be your country,
you want the country to express your 
values,
then boy,
if you don't vote,
even in a place like North Dakota where 
we know how it's going to come out with 
this,
a very red state.
Massachusetts is a blue state.
California is a blue state.
You can go through them.
You sort of know a lot because of 
gerrymandering and the tribalism and the
sectionalism of this country before you 
go in,
and yet it's so important that in times 
of chaos like this,
that you make your will known because 
it's not just who wins.
It's about engagement.
It's about taking seriously the crisis 
of American life that I think.
I don't think there's a single person 
who doesn't get it,
that we're in a crisis and that comes 
from the right and the left.
As you often and keep saying it,
elections matter.
I do think that's the most important 
thing to keep in mind.
I'm really disappointed when I hear the 
losers question the system.
Everyone knows the rules.
It's amazing.
We ended our last part of the 
conversation with you sort of 
questioning the system.
We need to have a dialogue about how the
rules are made up.
I think we do need that dialogue and we 
need to rethink the electoral college.
There are a whole bunch of things we 
need to start to rethink.
Gerrymandering.
I'm for computer gerrymandering.
Well,
can we go back to Jefferson and make it 
just squares?
We could about where you,
but it's easy today to set up a computer
program that would,
that would create the most competitive 
congressional districts possible given 
the circumstances and yet either side 
when it's in power,
tries to tweak the system to make a 
political advantage for itself or both 
sides agree to create as many safe seats
as possible to limit the number of 
contestants.
I just think that's so un-American.
It's wrong.
And we know that this can be solved.
In 1787 this was hard.
Both parties do it.
But today,
thanks to artificial intelligence,
computing,
demographics,
census,
we now can do it.
We could create competitive districts in
this country if we chose to.
I want a constitutional amendment saying
that's how it's going to be done.
And Jefferson would be all over this.
He'd look at the technology and say,
well,
of course you should do this.
In his time,
how do you measure it?
But in our time you can measure it and 
you could do it right.
So there's,
I do believe that these changes need to 
be examined,
but what I don't like is sour grapes.
The fact is that Donald Trump won the 
election of 2016.
He's entitled to try to create Donald 
Trump's America.
It was sort of a plebiscite in 2018.
It was not a disaster for him,
but it wasn't a great triumph for him 
either.
But no,
the country did not repudiate him.
The country did not say we're gonna line
both houses of Congress with enough 
Democrats to stop whatever Donald Trump 
is trying to do.
Not at all.
You cannot read the election results in 
that way and so you have to go back to 
Jefferson's fundamental faith.
That majority rule is majority rule.
You may not like that there are people 
that are really upset about what 
happened,
but that would be the case if the 
election results had been reversed in 
some way.
The system is what it is.
Elections matter,
and I think of these candidates,
David getting up at dawn,
flying around the country or going on 
buses or RVs,
knocking on doors,
17 media events per day,
three speeches,
a late night rally,
getting back on that RV,
going to some other town,
exhaustion,
making calls for fundraising,
putting out controversies and fires,
clarifying their statements,
trying to maintain some semblance of a 
life.
It's like a marathon after a marathon,
after a marathon,
after a marathon.
This is not just like,
I'll throw my hat in the ring and see 
what happens.
I mean,
people work themselves into deep 
exhaustion,
getting out and facing the people.
And then on a certain day,
in this case,
it was this Tuesday,
November sixth,
we say,
all right,
everyone in America knows the 
candidates,
thanks to our media and social media,
nobody can claim they don't know what 
candidate A stands for,
or candidate B.
At some point we say enough already,
you've got to decide and the people go 
to the polls and after all of that,
maybe billions of dollars of activity,
television ads,
you name it,
appearance after appearance after 
appearance.
These,
I do a lot of dawn taxis in my life,
David,
it is no fun and these people are doing 
worse than that every single day for a 
year.
Then the moment comes and the people go 
into these moves and they push x and 
that's the result and you have to bow to
it.
You have to say.
Right or wrong.
It's majestic how this works.
The people decide it.
You can't say it's some sort of rigged 
thing because I knew exactly.
There was a Senate race here in North 
Dakota.
I knew exactly who candidate A was and 
what she stood for.
I knew exactly who candidate B was and 
what he stood for.
I can't say,
Huh,
as I sometimes do,
like in a county commission thing or a 
local judge,
huh,
who's who,
you know exactly what they stand for.
You get to vote.
They tally it up.
There's no voter fraud.
The machines and the people are 
outstanding at measuring these things 
and they say candidate x got 280,000
votes and candidate y got 112,000
votes.
It's that simple.
Well,
I need to interject.
You just painted this picture of how 
hard they work.
Representatives,
our senators or congressmen,
people in government,
how hard they work and you know.
It's exhausting.
Doesn't really matter if they're 
Republican or Democrat.
They're working for what they think is 
right.
They're working for the betterment of 
the nation as they understand it.
You know,
it's so easy for us as citizens and 
voters to just bash them and,
you know,
go to the worst possible scenarios.
And I would stand up for,
we need to appreciate these people.
There's a book that I just gave my copy 
of to you today.
Holding it in my hand.
Michael Lewis.
The fifth risk.
He's also written books that people will
probably know,
The big short,
moneyball.
The blind side and so on.
So this is his newest book.
I gave it to you as a sort of a lobbying
effort to get you to say,
yeah,
let's do this as a Jefferson Hour book.
See if we can get him on the air.
But you know,
it's a short read,
but the reason I'm going on about it is 
that it starts out a little dark and 
there's these stories,
but what I was left with was just an 
amazement of how hard people in the 
government work.
You just,
elected officials,
bureaucrats.
It's a little frightening because the 
Department of Energy,
I think there's 3000 open seats and you 
know,
these are the people that make sure that
dirty bombs don't get into the country.
They don't just worry about petroleum.
Or that oil is in safe tanker cars when 
it goes to market.
And then you get into the department of 
Agriculture and the weather bureau.
And I'm walking away from this book 
going,
wow,
I'm proud of my country.
Look at the stuff it does for us.
So there's so much that's right with 
America.
My voice is going up,
I'm excited.
I hear it.
It's a great book.
Anyway.
So there's a woman in my neighborhood 
who was running for office,
she lost.
It was a state legislative office.
She came to see me one evening and she 
said,
I've been to every door.
I've been to every house in the 
district.
There is no voter in my district of this
community in the state of North Dakota 
that I haven't walked down the sidewalk 
up the steps,
rung the doorbell,
either their home or they're not,
but she had gone to every single 
domicile in the district,
often with some unpleasant results,
but she did it.
That's how it works.
That's called retail politics.
She didn't have to make call day after 
day to giant corporations or the Koch 
Brothers or to George Soros to try to 
beg for money.
That fortunately is not so prevalent in 
small states and legislatures of the 
kind that North Dakota has.
But imagine this.
Imagine if you are Beto O'Rourke,
the Texas senate candidate who lost by.
Going to every county in his state.
253 counties I think there are in Texas.
He went to every one.
Imagine the sheer exhaustion in the 
first four days of November when you've 
lived,
you've been gobbling down hotdogs and 
cheeseburgers.
You're going through Taco John's at two 
in the morning because you're on your 
way to some other place in the middle of
the middle of the middle of nowhere.
You're going to be at the optimist club 
in the morning or the,
you know,
they are going to be at a factory 
meeting people as they go in.
By November first ,these
people are just like wired from pure 
exhaustion and they've worked as hard as
they can possibly work to get the word 
out of who they are and what they stand 
for.
And then people go to the polls and you 
either win or you lose,
the winner celebrates and the loser 
thinks,
What could I have done?
Is there something I said about meat?
Is it that thing I said about Mars?
It'd be fun to talk to a few candidates 
that have gone through that fire and 
come out on either side and just,
I don't know if have a winner would be 
willing to be that candidate or not.
But a loser might.
It's not like going back in eighth 
grade.
We need to respect these people for that
effort.
Or when you're running for council 
member.
I'm running for student council.
And then you either win or you don't.
That's all you do,
nothing.
You put up three posters.
Actually I did that.
Yeah,
I did that.
Were you,
what was your outcome?
I won.
Me too.
But you know how hard you worked at it.
Meaning,
not.
One poster with magic markers which were
just invented back then.
That's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm talking about if you're a 
presidential candidate.
Retail politics.
You're flying across this country.
You wake up in Boston,
you don't even know what city you're in.
You fly to Newark,
you give a talk.
So maybe that's not so retail.
Four media events.
Then you fly to San Diego and give a 
major speech,
three media events and a dinner.
Meanwhile you're calling your pollsters,
you're calling your advisors.
People are saying you shouldn't have 
said that.
What you said there in Sacramento.
We can say without hesitation that 
Jefferson never did that.
He never did squat.
Yeah.
You know,
he never got up and he never asked for a
vote.
He never asked for a dollar.
He never.
He never made a campaign appearance of 
any sort to.
Did he provide refreshments at the 
ballot box?
That that might count.
At the county fair where the on the 
election day he would,
maybe there'd be a tub of Apple Jack or 
of whiskey or something.
That's it.
And so my point is you can't say these 
are lazy people or they take the system 
for granted.
I think the whole system is nuts.
I don't think there's any point in your 
flying from Newark to San Diego to 
Seattle and back to Tampa on the same 
day.
That just seems insane to me,
but that's where we are and then the 
vote comes and you think of,
well let's say you're Beto O'Rourke,
the crestfallenness after all that hope,
I lost.
I can't imagine what that would be like.
And again,
it would be very interesting to talk to 
somebody like that.
Can I pull us back to a Jefferson quote?
Yes of course.
We talked about earlier some of his more
optimistic views,
but later in life,
and I'm sure you're familiar with this 
letter,
it was to Edward Livingston in April of 
1824.
He wrote,
'a government held together by the bands
of reason only requires much compromise 
of opinion that things even salutory 
should not be crammed down the throats 
of dissenting brethren.'
Amen.
Especially when they may be put into the
form to be willingly swallowed.
In other words,
you could do this more sweetly.
There's a more general way to do this.
And that a great deal of indulgence is 
necessary to strengthen habits of 
harmony and fraternity.
In other words,
taking the high road is a lot harder.
And let me just say this,
I'm trying to be as objective 
nonpartisan as possible.
If the day after the election,
the first thing you do is fire your 
attorney general.
That defeats the purpose of a democracy 
because why didn't this happen three 
weeks ago?
Well,
because you want to wait until all the 
results are in,
you have to,
either side.
The people are entitled to know what 
they're getting.
You and I grew up,
in our formative years,
watching.
Magic marker years.
Watching television and listening to 
presidents of both parties come out and 
say,
we essentially,
we are all Americans.
You know,
we were all federalists.
We're all,
we're all republicans.
McCain after his loss.
We're all Americans.
And I think that,
you know,
part of the shock of what's going on 
right now is that we don't have people 
in government that come out and say 
we're all federalists were all 
republicans.
The purpose for Jefferson,
you're exactly right.
To bring it back to Jefferson,
the day after the election,
the winners need to say everyone counts,
I'm the president or the governor or the
senator of everyone.
I know there's been a lot of 
vituperation,
and animadversion during this election,
but that's over now.
Some people will do that.
Some.
Harmony,
and then the loser needs to say what 
McCain said when he lost to Obama,
which was,
let's celebrate Barack Obama.
I'm going to do everything in my power 
to help you succeed.
Call on me.
This is important.
You have won.
I am here to honor and respect you.
He was booed by the people in Phoenix 
because they wanted the usual blood and 
guts.
I hate this guy.
Somehow that that whole thing has to 
shift from.
It's not important to win.
It's important for the nation,
you know,
and and sometimes you win,
sometimes you lose.
Graciousness is the heart of it.
That's the word.
Jefferson wanted graciousness on both 
sides and we are not in a period where 
there's a lot of graciousness.
I think Nancy Pelosi was gracious in her
victory speech on the night when the 
Democrats modestly took control.
And honestly it sounds like Trump was 
very gracious to her in their private 
phone call.
Then the next day things kind of go back
to normal.
Yeah.
My point is that,
you know,
if you go back to the Jefferson letter 
to Edward Livingston,
Jefferson is saying this only works if 
there's a high level of graciousness.
You have to seek consensus,
you have to forgive each other.
You have to agree to compromise,
to work together and respect each other.
A government held together by the bands 
of reason only requires much compromise 
of opinion.
Boy that's perfect,
right?
It is.
For Jefferson is perfect and the,
I was thinking about this because 
there's so many reasons to be 
disenchanted with Thomas Jefferson these
days,
but his vision of how majority rule 
works is spot on,
David,
nobody in our history has ever said it 
better than Jefferson,
which is the will of the people matters.
How do you distill the will of the 
people?
You do it by elections.
When elections are over,
you accept their results.
And he was consistent throughout his 
life.
We'd go back to the George Mason letter 
of 1790.
It is necessary to give as well as take 
in a government like ours.
He believed that the difference between 
a Federalist in a Republican was not 
that great,
and even if it is that great,
whoever's elected represents everyone in
his constituency,
everyone in his state,
everyone in this country that you have 
to reach out to the other with a capital
O and say,
tell me what you need.
I'm not sure I can deliver it,
but I will at least listen and try to 
take seriously whatever your point of 
view is,
whatever your needs are,
whatever your frustrations are,
and we're just not getting a lot of that
now.
And it's not just the Republicans,
it's both parties.
We need to lower the temperature.
I say that all the time.
We need to lower the temperature.
The Washington Post published an opinion
from their editorial board the day after
the election,
they said the Democrats 'return to 
control over the House of 
Representatives is much more than a 
victory for one party.
It's a sign of Health for American 
democracy.
The Democratic victory is also a sign of
political health.
To the extent it is a form of pushback 
against excesses,
rhetorical and in terms of policy 
committed by the trump administration.'
I'm not sure I think that's true.
I start by saying.
I think it is a sign of health.
That in every midterm there is a kind of
reaction against the party in power.
I don't think if,
if you were Donald Trump,
I don't think you need to believe,
oh,
they've slapped me a little here.
I don't feel that at all.
I think he's right when he says,
you know what,
this was not a bad election for me at 
all.
I took it to mean,
if you look at the turnout,
the amount of women that are going to be
in congress.
Hundred.
So I didn't think so much when I read 
it,
you know,
it's a sign of health.
That's what I was.
I do think the coming of young,
new diverse,
two American Indian women,
Muslim,
a Muslim representative from Minnesota.
The woman from Minnesota.
It was great.
She was giving her victory speech.
Said Minnesota not only welcomes 
immigrants,
we send them to congress.
I love her.
I like that too.
These young women.
They're gonna help us all.
They're not,
and I mean no disrespect,
but they are not Diane Feinstein.
This is a different type of young woman 
with a different level of confidence and
a desire to shake this country into 
greater gender equality.
There's a great quote from Jefferson 
about that.
We'll end this segment with saying,
nothing is more incumbent on the old 
than to know when they should get out of
the way and relinquish to younger 
successors the honors they can no longer
earn and the duties they can no longer 
perform.
He wrote that in 1815 to John Falon.
We need to take a short break.
We'll continue this conversation in just
a moment.
You're listening to the Thomas Jefferson
Hour.
Hello everyone.
It's Clay Jenkinson.
Just sneaking in a little announcement 
between segments of the Jefferson Hour.
I want you to join me this winter at 
Lochsa Lodge west of Missoula for two 
humanities cultural retreats:
the first one,
water and the west,
January 13th through 18th,
and the second,
Shakespeare without tears,
January 19th through 24th.
For more information,
go to our website,
Jeffersonhour.com/tours.
We'll see you in the mountains.
Welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson 
Hour,
your weekly conversation with President 
Thomas Jefferson.
We're talking about the elections and 
we're recording this program on November
eighth.
Two days after the fact.
You know,
it made me think,
one advantage that Jefferson had that 
politicians do not have now is that it 
took so much time for things,
you know,
they,
they'd make a decision or a proposal 
would be made or legislation would be 
written and presented and they all had 
time.
They all had time to think about it and 
discuss it.
And now we're two days past the election
and already there's a raft of things 
that have happened that you know,
you don't even have time to react to 
them.
They just.
So by the time this program broadcasts,
who knows what will have happened.
It's a three mile per hour world in 
Jefferson's time and our time is 
absolutely instantaneous.
And you hear these people on Fox and CNN
and Msnbc saying,
when something happened,
and boy that seems like a year ago but 
it was only yesterday,
they all say this now because so much 
happens so fast that people can't keep 
up with the sheer chaos.
Or react to it with any thought.
There's no reflection time.
People aren't able to read books.
Thank you.
That was the word I was looking for.
Reflection.
The other thing is,
you know,
so that in Jefferson's time,
congressmen and in Washington DC would 
be staying in these bad boarding houses.
They'd be in the Senate chamber or the 
House of Representatives Chamber,
and then at the end of the day they'd go
back to the boarding house and all have 
supper together and they'd drink a 
little grog or take a little walk.
They couldn't go back to their homes 
constituencies in Delaware or South 
Carolina.
It's just impossible.
So they'd be there for the whole 
session.
They knew each other,
they saw each other.
They knew each other's strengths and 
weaknesses.
They liked or disliked each other,
but they had to deal with each other 
with a very tiny town.
And Jefferson,
who is another great political genius 
would have them over for supper,
serve them exquisite French wines,
fine French cuisine,
show them the world's largest cheese,
maybe show them a live prairie dog from 
Lewis and Clark or a badger or you know,
water from the Missouri River or 
whatever.
And they had to kind of know each other.
But today,
this is not an exaggeration.
I get on the airport on a Monday morning
to go somewhere.
I see my senators went back to 
Washington,
D,
C,
so they're leaving at 7:00
AM.
We're going to go to Washington DC 
around three in the afternoon.
If things go well,
Tuesday,
they're in their offices and maybe on 
the floor of the house or the Senate.
Wednesday maybe.
On Thursday afternoon they're starting 
to split to go back to their 
constituencies in Tampa or San Diego or 
North Dakota.
They're in session a couple of days per 
week.
They're almost never actually on the 
floor they're really in their offices 
facing the coal trust or the timber 
trust or whatever it might be.
The four H club of Seattle,
and then they fly home and so there's no
chance for them to actually develop 
community because they are almost 
literally never together and the 
factionalism is able to feed off of 
that.
And so you know,
you're absolutely right,
David.
In Jefferson's time,
there was a sort of reflective leisure 
and I suppose you'd say there was an 
enforced togetherness because there was 
nowhere to go.
There were no planes to whisk them away 
to their home constituencies and so 
there was a different way,
you know,
on a night you can imagine John Quincy 
Adams or John Adams or Henry Clay or 
Andrew Jackson reading a book,
smoking or chewing tobacco sitting in 
the lobby.
What you're saying is that they really 
didn't listen to their constituents.
They couldn't.
Yeah.
They had letters.
They would write letters back and forth 
and they would go home.
Are there instances of average farmers 
coming to Jefferson with problems that 
he would react to or not?
A tiny handful,
but basically not.
And when Jefferson would open up the 
White House on the fourth of July and 
January first,
people would roll in who were not his 
people.
He'd greet them and someone might say,
Mr President,
I'm really worried about the tariff.
Or Mr.
President.
'I think we should.
We should declare war on France.'
He would canvas a little,
but he was reading local newspapers.
If he could get them.
There were circular letters.
People wrote circular letters,
which would be like a listserv,
but basically these politicians were 
hunching it.
They were intuiting the will of the 
people.
We know that Jefferson was,
as a rule,
pretty reserved.
That's a fair statement,
right?
He's not out there drinking.
And the other hand guy was pretty 
passionate,
even if it didn't,
if he did his,
correct me.
But um,
my impression is that he's,
he's pretty passionate.
Even if he didn't allow the public to 
see that passion.
I mean,
you know,
I think about.
Even his closest friends.
He,
his beliefs ran pretty deep.
I mean,
if you think about his run ins with 
Hamilton over the bank when he was 
secretary of state with George 
Washington,
he had passions.
By the way,
I got a wonderful,
typewritten letter from a woman in 
Colorado Springs who said,
stop beating up on Hamilton so much.
We get it.
You didn't like Hamilton,
but that's.
It's just an obvious example.
Forgive me.
But,
uh,
but yes,
absolutely.
What I think is so amazing about 
Jefferson,
David,
I keep,
you know Jefferson,
you take him for granted,
you lock him into his faults,
you kind of get complacent.
And then so one day you wake up,
you realize.
Here's what I realized this week,
this is the most radical political 
figure who has ever been a major force 
in American life.
Wait a minute.
Repeat that.
He is a radical political figure.
He defends the reign of terror in 
France.
He believes in tearing up the 
consitution.
From his day to ours,
you would place him there?
Who is more radical than Thomas 
Jefferson,
as a major.
Perhaps our current president.
Yeah,
and radical in a different sense,
but there's a nihilist radicalism in 
this president,
he's a destroyer and not a builder,
when you really examine Jefferson,
this is a radical man and the fact that 
we entrusted him as one of the deep 
state people,
one of the biggest abolishment people of
his time,
it's pretty interesting.
A typical person would be more like 
George Washington,
who,
he wanted a republic.
He trusted the people up to a point,
but he wasn't a fool about these things.
He was like,
no.
Uh,
there are people who know how to do this
and most people don't.
As long as you brought up Washington,
I have another Jefferson quote.
You've done some homework.
'Conscience is the only clue which will 
eternally guide a man clear of all 
doubts and inconsistencies,'
he wrote that to him in May of 1789,
to George Washington.
Jefferson did?
Yes.
Why?
Read it again.
'Which will eternally guide man clear of
all doubts and inconsistencies.'
I always wind up hating myself when I 
don't follow the dictates of my 
conscience.
You know,
we were just talking about how radical 
he was and I was bringing up how 
passionate he was in different,
you know,
so.
So here's the other question.
He was driven by conscience,
don't you think?
To a very large degree.
Of course there were areas where he shut
that switch.
Well,
of course,
yeah.
But the other thing about Jefferson is,
that I just come back to again and 
again,
is he believed that we're up to it.
He believed we can do this.
It's about time for your essay this 
week,
but I'm gonna.
Before we we go to that.
My takeaways this week,
first and foremost elections matter,
and second is this,
this quote of Jefferson's,
that conscience is the only clue which 
will eternally guide us.
I'll tell you my essay this week is a 
pretty sharp one and it's based on 
conscience.
Good,
I look forward to that.
Um,
and then also his quote that it's 
necessary to give and take in a 
government like ours.
And then finally I just want to,
you know,
I am so proud of the American public 
that they voted in record numbers that 
they did.
It really,
it uplifts me.
I went to my precinct at 7:00
AM and there was a line out the door.
Same thing.
And also,
you know,
congratulations to all the new members 
of Congress.
I just think it's fabulous that as of 
the day before,
it was like 98 new women that were going
to serve in Congress.
And I think that's great.
And I think it's gonna leave a mark and 
a good one.
Let me say as North Dakotan.
Yeah.
Congratulations to Kevin Cramer,
United States senator.
And thank you Heidi Heitkamp for your 
six years of service to this country and
North Dakota in the US Senate.
Yeah.
I know her.
You do.
She's been in this room.
She really was somebody who wanted to 
serve like you were talking about 
earlier,
people who win and lose and you know 
their motivations and stuff and you 
know,
it's easy to demonize the other side.
We all do it and she doesn't deserve 
that.
I really respect her and I thank her for
her service.
Me too.
So with that sir,
it is now time for this week's Jefferson
Watch.
Thank you,
David.
So what did the midterm election of 2018
tell us?
I'm going to try to make sense of it 
from a purely analytical point of view.
If,
as President Trump said repeatedly,
he was on the ballot in 2018,
the results are mixed.
The election was certainly not a ringing
endorsement of his character,
behavior,
policies,
and the first two years of his 
Presidency.
But it was not a severe vote of no 
confidence either.
A serious repudiation would have 
required something like a 50-75 vote 
swing in the House of Representatives,
and a gain of a Democrat or two in the 
Senate.
And endorsement would have required a 
gain of 10-20 Republicans in the House,
and a filibuster-proof Senate,
that is,
61-39 or better for the Republicans.
Frankly,
I don't think you can conclude much from
the 2018 election except that anti-Trump
feeling brought about significant 
Democratic gains in the House of 
Representatives.
I think Trump is right when he declares 
things went pretty well,
considering.
Many people,
and I am one of them,
saw this election as "the most important
of my lifetime,"
America's chance to "take back the 
country" from Trump and Trumpism before 
it was too late.
If that was the goal,
in my analysis,
it failed.
As soon as the election ended,
Trump fired his Attorney General,
appointed a Trump protector as acting 
Attorney General,
lashed out at everyone he perceived to 
be his enemy,
including career Republican Congressmen 
who lost to Democratic challengers,
had a journalist banned from the White 
House press corps for asking an unwanted
question,
and that was just Day One of the 
post-2018 "repudiation."
Elections matter.
The country has not been taken back.
If you were looking at this from Mars or
Jupiter you would have to say America 
seems,
on the whole,
taking the entire national,
state,
and local vote into account,
to be mostly OK with Trump and his 
behavior.
A little depressing,
isn't it,
unless you are one of the tens of 
millions who think Trump can do no 
wrong,
those who believe the liberals,
progressives,
feminists,
professors,
foundation heads,
establishment,
and deep state types had and have it 
coming.
In some ways Trump is a political 
genius.
He found a way in 2016 to neutralize 17 
other Republican candidates for the 
Presidency,
some of them very heavily subsidized by 
the Establishment,
and get the nomination.
He did this by ridicule,
innuendo,
character assassination,
bullying,
and making wild pronouncements that were
as entertaining as they were 
irresponsible.
He won the nomination not by appealing 
to the "better angels of our nature,"
as Lincoln put it,
but by appealing to our darkest fears 
and aggressive impulses.
It worked.
And he has continued to encourage some 
of the least enlightened energies in 
American life for the first two years of
his Presidency.
This has driven the Left and the 
Establishment to the brink of madness,
which of course was part of his plan all
along.
Donald Trump is the 45th President of 
the United States,
our first Revenge President.
His tribe-an angry army of 45 million 
people-is taking great glee in giving it
to the liberals and the deep state 
types.
Every time Trump uses the word 
"nationalist,"
or calls CNN reporters "the enemy of the
people,"
he is throwing kerosene on the rage of 
the Trumpites.
Trump's "forgotten Americans" are so 
tired of being put down by the liberals,
so sick of being dismissed by those who 
say they are rubes out in the heartland 
clinging to their guns and the Bible,
that they are having the time of their 
life watching the Great Leader break one
Presidential taboo after the next.
In the 2018 election Trump knew he was 
likely to lose the House of 
Representatives.
And he did,
though not by some sort of overwhelming 
repudiation.
He lost the number of seats that 
virtually any sitting president would 
lose in his first midterm election.
My point is that he knew this was likely
to happen,
so he concentrated his vast demagogic 
energies on the United States Senate,
and gave his time,
in the weeks before the election,
to Senate candidates in red states like 
Texas,
North Dakota,
and Montana.
On the whole the strategy worked.
The Senate is now more firmly in control
of the Trumpites than it was a week ago.
There won't be any more cliffhanger 
confirmation votes for life-tenured 
judges and justices.
Trump is no fool.
He knows that no President has ever been
impeached by the House of 
Representatives AND convicted by the 
Senate,
not Andrew Johnson,
not Bill Clinton,
and it is quite possible that Richard 
Nixon would have found 34 Senators to 
vote against such an extreme 
Constitutional maneuver in 1974.
Trump knows that the new,
moderately-Democratic House of 
Representatives could impeach him once a
week for the next two years and the 
Senate would protect him.
Can any of you think of any scenario 
under which the current United States 
Senate voted two to one to remove Trump 
from the Presidency?
We know that it cannot happen,
even if Trump did shoot someone dead on 
Fifth Avenue,
and Trump certainly knows that.
So he is almost daring the House to 
impeach him-a pointless and important 
move that would not accomplish its goal 
and would meanwhile stir up the enraged 
Trump tribe to carry their AR-15s into 
the streets of America.
I am not trying to be dramatic.
I believe that if the House impeached 
President Trump,
we would see widespread militia violence
in America.
The bombs sent to a dozen Trump critics 
just before the election were a warning 
sign.
So what if Trump fires Robert Mueller?
He gets away with it no matter how 
loudly every responsible person in the 
United States howls.
What if he closes the US-Mexican border 
by executive order?
What if he arrests 50 journalists?
What if he lobs a few cruise missiles 
into Iran just to show them we can 
topple their regime any time we might 
wish to?
It's hard to know just what Trump wants 
for America.
He seems to want us to disengage from 
our alliances throughout the world,
to become fortress America,
to become a mean-ass monolithic nation 
state that tells the rest of the world 
to go jump in the lake.
He seems to want to punish all the 
sophisticates and the liberals who have 
belittled and shunned him throughout the
course of his lifetime.
If you want to watch the exact moment 
when he determined to become President,
no matter what the cost,
and to use his power to be The 
Anti-Obama,
to repudiate everything Barack Obama did
and represented,
just watch the clip of President Obama 
ridiculing Trump (in his presence) at 
the White House Correspondents' Dinner 
in 2011.
If Mr.
Obama had kept his mouth shut that 
night,
I do not think Donald Trump would be 
President of the United States.
The Trump coalition has a whiff of 
fascism about it.
Trump is very careful to make 
pronouncements that could be construed 
as fascist,
and then to pull back just enough to 
make the anti-Trump alarmists look 
ridiculous for trying to convince the 
nation that the sky is falling,
the sky is falling.
Donald Trump's greatest talent is for 
ridicule,
and nothing satisfies him,
and his angry mob of "forgotten 
Americans,"
more than making Elizabeth Warren go 
apoplectic.
So let me be very stark in my 
conclusions.
First,
it would be a terrible mistake ever to 
underestimate Donald Trump.
Is there a line he would not cross?
He has ridiculed the disabled,
Gold Star families,
a US Senator who spent years in a Hanoi 
prison camp,
a woman who came forward to inform the 
country that it was about to put onto 
the Supreme Court a man capable of 
sexual assault,
the people of Puerto Rico.
And on and on and on.
Second,
the midterm election may not be the sign
of hope,
the triumph of checks and balances,
that the left and the mainstream media 
have posited.
Third,
I believe Donald Trump has now 
consolidated his personal power and he 
intends to use it,
not to do good things for America,
though he is not necessarily averse to 
that,
but to damage everyone and every entity,
institution,
ethnic group,
or nation state that has dismissed him 
as a clown and a dangerous buffoon.
I'm Clay Jenkinson.
We'll see you next week for another 
exciting edition of the Thomas Jefferson
Hour.
The Thomas Jefferson Hour is brought to 
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President Thomas Jefferson lived from 
1743 to 1826,
and this program presents his views.
President Jefferson is portrayed by the 
award-winning humanities scholar and 
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