JUDY WOODRUFF: And that brings us to the analysis
of Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated
columnist Mark Shields and New York Times
columnist David Brooks.
It's so good to see both of you.
So, let's pick up, David, with what we were
just hearing about these Senate races moving
in the direction of the Democrats. What is
going on here?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I would say, among Republicans,
what had been concern has now turned into
full-bore panic.
The president is behind by sometimes 12 or
13 points in the national polls, way behind
in many of these states. And that was survivable
if you were a Senate candidate maybe in 1980,
when you had a lot of ticket-splitting, and
you could -- you could run well ahead of your
-- the head of your party.
That doesn't happen anymore. In 2016, there
was basically no ticket-splitting. If the
president won in that state, the Senate candidate
won. And so it's just super hard to win when
your president is losing.
I don't think there are any Republican candidates
who have successfully found a posture, how
to be loyal Republicans and not totally Trumpists.
And so you're not only looking at Arizona
and Colorado, which seem gone for the Republicans,
but we're talking about states like Iowa and
Georgia.
And if -- those should be solid Republican
seats. And it's just a -- it's a just a complete
collapse, it looks like, right now in the
polls.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Mark, as Lisa pointed
out, the year started out with Democrats worried
and thinking they might not be able to take
the Senate.
Are you surprised at this turn of events?
MARK SHIELDS: I am, Judy. I'm surprised at
a couple of things.
David's right about Democrats being on the
offensive and Republicans being on the defensive.
But I guess what surprises me more than any
-- it should not surprise me -- is that this
has been the pattern.
When a president gets in trouble, his Senate
colleagues face the same fate very often.
In 2016, for example, every Republican -- every
senator who -- won in a state that the presidential
candidate of that senator's party carried.
In 2008, when Barack Obama swept, only one
Republican survived in a state that Obama
had carried. That happened to be Susan Collins
in Maine some three terms ago.
And we saw, in 1980 -- David mentioned 1980
-- 12 Senate seats switched in 1980, giants
of the Senate. George McGovern, Warren Magnuson,
Frank Church, John Culver all went down and
that year, and the Republicans won the Senate
for the first time in 26 years.
Why? Because the presidential candidate, or
the president at the top of the ticket, was
just incredibly weak. Jimmy Carter was at
31 percent job approval in 1980. George W.
Bush was at 25 percent job approval in 2008.
Even though he wasn't on the ballot, we had
the financial collapse. We had Iraq going
absolutely south on him.
And so this is what Republicans face right
now, is that same kind of climate. And that's
why they're worried.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, David, it's interesting,
because, as we just heard in Lisa's conversation,
that these Democratic candidates are -- they
turn out to be candidates who are talented
in an election year when people are paying
attention to the challengers.
So often, it's the incumbent who's favored.
DAVID BROOKS: And, so often, it's the incumbent
who has the money advantage, and that's often
not the case right now.
Mark Kelly in Arizona has twice as much money
as the incumbent. You're seeking big fund-raisers.
The Democrat who is running against Lindsey
Graham has -- is raising huge amounts of money.
So they're getting the money.
But I think it's not even the campaign. So,
James Fallows once said that this year is
like 1918 with the flu, 1932 with the Depression,
and 1968 with a war. And so we have all of
that all at once. And I think it's just not
an election like any other.
It's just a much more intense political era,
a much more revolutionary political climate.
And it's, in this kind of climate, if ever
-- and it's unprecedented, so we don't know
-- I just think you're going to see something
much vaster than we -- than we think in a
normal political year, even when there is
a wave.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Mark, at the same time,
the Democrats who are running who are challenging
these Republicans have to be in a position
to take advantage of what comes their way.
MARK SHIELDS: Oh, exactly, Judy.
And I thought the point in Lisa's piece that
Jessica made that was so important is that
nobody has been able to figure out how to
distance themselves from Trump effectively.
I mean, two leading Republicans who did distance
themselves from Trump, Jeff Flake and Bob
Corker, both found themselves on the outs,
Bob Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake of Arizona,
and outside the Senate.
And so, how do you do that? How do you walk
that line? Richard Nixon used to say, when
-- say anything you want to another Republican.
Say anything you want for me or against me.
Just win. There was a practicality about it.
Donald Trump doesn't have that same approach.
I mean, it's total loyalty to him, and -- which
is coming with an increasing political price,
as David mentioned, in the numbers that are
currently in polls.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And speaking of the president,
David, what we're seeing from the president
now, and just yesterday announcing the Republican
Convention isn't going to happen anymore,
at least in Jacksonville, the big event that
they had planned.
But you also have him being judged on an almost
hourly basis by the way he's handling this
pandemic. You have him sending federal agents
into American cities and threatening to send
them into more.
I mean, that's the atmos -- that's the political
reality that this presidential race is taking
place in.
DAVID BROOKS: Well, the loss of the convention
is bad news for Donald Trump, because he's
behind, and he needs some events that can
maybe shift the race, and he's down another
one.
So, all that's left is the debates. And so
we're -- and he will give a speech, I assume,
some sort of convention speech, but it'll
just be another day at the news cycle.
The violence in Portland is something I'm
curious about. I think most people -- certainly,
I'm appalled to have nameless random officers
acting like this is not a democracy, acting
like this is some sort of fascist state.
On the other hand, there is a lot of violence
in Portland. And if you go on a Republican
news feed on the right side of my Twitter
feed, it's all the violence of the protesters.
And so Donald Trump has tried to recreate
a 1968 law and order campaign. And maybe this
will turn some minds about that. Maybe there
will be a sense of panic. I tend not to think
that. The violence is not widespread. It's
in one place.
I think that the general trend, most people
will look at that and say, are we turning
into a police state? But that sense of, we
need law and order, I think that's the only
way I see Trump appealing to some people who
are genuinely scared, if they are genuinely
scared, which I'm not sure about.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, is that an attack that
could be effective at this time, when the
president is facing so much criticism for
the way he's handled the pandemic?
MARK SHIELDS: Judy, he's dealing with a pair
of deuces right now, if this were a poker
game. I mean, he's playing what he can play.
And that seems to be -- maybe he a night to
-- soul-to-soul meeting with Roger Stone after
his pardon -- or his commutation, I should
say, and was reminded of the best scenes from
1968.
The reality, Judy, is crowding upon him; 39
states saw increases in coronavirus, in the
COVID-19, this past week. We had four million
cases for the first time.
And the one point where I have seen any Republican
encouragement is that, for the first time,
Donald Trump seems to be taking it seriously.
He doesn't do it well. He reads it. He cannot
read from a teleprompter. No one's ever taught
him how to do it. And it's not very convincing.
But he had a week where he was at least addressing
the gravity of the situation and acknowledging
it, and acknowledging that, in spite of the
record heat wave in Washington and elsewhere
in the country this year, that it's not going
to miraculously disappear in hot weather.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, meantime, and just quickly,
because I do -- there's something else I do
want to ask you both about.
But you have the Republicans in the Senate
unable to come to any kind of agreement, David,
over what sort of relief to give the American
people, with these additional unemployment
benefits about to run out.
Could this be a political serious blunder
for the Republicans, if they don't make the
right move?
DAVID BROOKS: I think so.
The economic crisis is still ongoing. And
the way we solved it temporarily was to give
people $600 checks. And now the Republicans
either want to cut it to $200, which is an
insult in a time of crisis, or Steve Mnuchin
seems to want to reform the process of distributing
the money in the middle of a crisis, for bureaucracies
that are barely keeping it together right
now.
And so it seems -- it seems just like, when
Republicans have to have a complicated thought,
they revert back to fiscal discipline. But
this is not the time for that. They should
be shoveling it out the door, in the nation's
interest and, frankly, in their own political
interest.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Mark, I do want to turn
both of you in our final seconds here to John
Lewis, of course, the civil rights icon, someone
who laid his body on the line for what he
believed in, who fought in his quiet way for
civil rights his entire life.
You had many occasions to be around him. What
would you say about John Lewis?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, one of the absolutely
disarming qualities of Congressman Lewis was,
whenever you ran into him, he would just grab
you by the hand and said: "Hello, my brother.
How are you?"
And I don't know. Being called your brother
by John Lewis was sort of special, and no
matter how many times it happened.
Judy, you put it best. He put his -- he here
is, the 10th child of poor sharecroppers at
Alabama, born in the segregated South. And
he put his life, he put his body on the line.
At the age of 23, he was at the Lincoln Memorial.
He was the firebrand that they were worried
about speaking before Martin Luther King.
Twenty-five, he walks across Edmund Pettus
Bridge, seeking the vote, the right to vote
that was promised to Americans and denied
systematically by state after state, including
his own. And he had his skull fractured, his
body broken, but never his spirit.
He was an incredible gentleman. He was an
incredible leader, an incredible example.
He left America so much better than he found
it. And people talk about changing the name
of the Edmund Pettus Bridge to John Lewis
Bridge, which is fine.
What they ought to do is pass a Voting Rights
Act, after the court decision in 2013, which
naively thought this problem was over. We
have seen the systematic denial of the right
to vote, whether it's cutting polling places,
cutting hours, purging of lists, I.D.s, voter
I.D.s.
And that would be the testimony and memorial
to John Lewis that would be appropriate, is
a Voting Rights Act, a real Voting Rights
Act.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, he will lay -- people
will pay his -- respects to him next week.
His funeral is one week from today.
Mark Shields, David Brooks, thank you both.
MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.
