[Feature: America "After Trump"] Roundtable Discussion: What Lies Beyond the "Divide"

The U.S. presidential election was held in November 2020, and after some confusion over the counting of votes, the Democrat Mr. Biden emerged victorious. Today, I hope we can look a bit beyond the debates of "why Biden won" or "whether the Trump phenomenon will continue."

First, since Professor Okayama has been staying in the U.S. since the spring and Mr. Kanari also went there to cover the election before and after the vote, I would like you to talk about the difference in temperature between Japanese media reports and opinion polls versus what you felt on the ground.

Cornell University, where I am currently affiliated, is located in Ithaca, New York. It is quite rural, about a three-hour drive northwest of Manhattan, but because it is a college town, it is very liberal and racially diverse.

However, if you drive ten minutes out of town, it is covered in "Trump-Pence" signboards; it feels like you are looking at two different worlds.

With COVID-19 spreading, we are basically in a state of confinement, but in relation to your question, there is something I have realized again while talking to people here. The people highlighted in Japanese and U.S. media are almost all heavily invested in either the Democratic or Republican camps. While there are indeed many such people, among the general public—as is perhaps natural—there are a fair number of people who have no great interest in politics even in this situation.

Such people do not even clearly understand the ideological differences between conservative and liberal positions. I was reminded that we must not forget the existence of these people.

On the other hand, the way those who are invested in a political party show their support is also characteristic. Regarding the partisanship of Americans today, political science points out two characteristics. One is that it has a negative character, and the other is that it is emotional.

Negative partisanship means that rather than having a party you like, you first have a party you hate, and you support the one you don't hate. Emotional means that the attitude toward a party is not based on positions on issues but literally on likes and dislikes—supporting a party because "I can't stand those guys."

Therefore, many people decide their support intuitively based on whether they get along with politicians of that party, like Trump. Also, since it is ultimately support for the "one they don't hate," their sense of support for the party is not necessarily exceptionally strong. I felt once again that we need to take these things into account.

What was the reaction like on and off campus regarding Biden's victory?

When the victory was projected, the strongly liberal campus was in an uproar. On the other hand, in the center of the city, there were only occasional supporters holding placards and leaning out of car windows shouting for joy; there were no scenes of people gathering and getting excited. Given the location has many conservatives, people might have been hesitant to make a big scene due to concerns about potential violence.

I see. Based on your gut feeling, did you feel that there were a fair number of Trump supporters even at Cornell University?

To be honest, it's hard to tell quantitatively, but one thing sticks in my mind. Around the spring, a student leader of the university's Republican student group wrote in the Cornell student newspaper that they would basically "maintain a low profile" this time. I think their stance was likely, "We don't strongly support Trump, but we won't switch to supporting the Democrats; we will act cautiously according to our own beliefs."

Thank you. Mr. Kanari, you went to the U.S. with the title of Roving Correspondent, didn't you?

Unfortunately, I couldn't do much "roving" due to the pandemic (laughs). This year (2020), I went to the U.S. for the month of March and then for a total of one month before and after the election, returning both times as the pandemic worsened.

For this presidential election, I had no choice but to rely mainly on telephone interviews, but the first thing I noticed was the gap with the opinion polls. I knew that Biden was showing up quite strongly in the polls. However, even when I called people thinking, "If that's the case, this person should be moving away from supporting Trump by now," surprisingly, there were several people whose support had actually strengthened. So I felt, "Wait, this is strange. It doesn't match the polls." In hindsight, Trump significantly increased his vote count compared to the previous time, so I believe that sense of unease was not wrong.

Trump faced headwinds, such as criticism of his COVID-19 response and the eruption of racial issues, but what did you feel were the reasons why his support did not peel away?

Many of the people I interviewed were from Appalachia or the Rust Belt regions like Ohio, and a significant number of them work in or benefit from energy-related industries. Consequently, Biden's talk of a transition away from fossil fuels hits them quite negatively. Of course, Biden was saying, "That will happen eventually."

When Biden said that in the final debate, I felt that "a certain amount of support would leave," and indeed, even people who had voted Democrat in every election except for 2016 were worried that a Biden administration would eliminate well-paying jobs, saying, "I went with Trump again this year."

Another thing is that the perception that the Democratic Party is moving to the left or becoming radicalized is likely being amplified through the media beyond the actual reality. Since it is an election where you choose either Democrat or Republican, I felt that as that image of the Democratic Party strengthens, there are people who will continue to vote for Trump even if they have to hold their noses.

This was when I gave a lecture in Wisconsin in November 2019. At that time, the Democrats had not yet narrowed down their candidates, and the overall atmosphere felt like Trump was somehow pushing ahead.

Most of the people who went out of their way to hear a Japanese university professor speak were liberal, Democrat-leaning types, but after the lecture ended, someone with a small note left it and walked away. The note said, "Don't only listen to what you want to hear" (laughs). Actually, the same thing happened in Texas a few years ago.

It was striking that there were people who wouldn't explicitly say, "I am a Trump supporter," but showed their presence in a subtle way.

That's eerie (laughs). Anti-Trump sentiment won out and Biden won. However, since the percentage and number of votes for Trump are quite significant, it is said that the Trump era will continue as he maintains influence within the Republican Party.

How should we position the fact that for these four years, Trump surged this far, mowed down the Republican mainstream, and was the President of the United States?

From my perspective, there are certainly many points of criticism. However, there is also the aspect that the "forgotten people"—the kind Mr. Kanari has been in contact with, who felt completely abandoned even by the Republican mainstream—returned to the electoral and political processes through the radical presence of Trump. If so, one could interpret this not necessarily as Trump being a destroyer of democracy, but rather as demonstrating the health of American democracy.

In the past, Andrew Jackson (the 7th President) was the first to be elected despite coming from extreme poverty in the West and having no particular education, among presidents who had all been elites from the East. He introduced the system of political appointments (the spoils system) that still exists today. He embodied a rebellion from the masses, so to speak, to prevent Washington from being dominated only by elites.

Thinking that way, when society becomes a pyramid-like structure in America, the movement to flatten it with some kind of Trump-like force is also happening in fields other than politics, such as religion. This could be rephrased as the "anti-intellectualism" Richard Hofstadter spoke of—in other words, anti-authoritarianism.

In a sense, the Trump phenomenon could be positively evaluated as an American movement to avoid a class-based society like Europe.

Professor Machidori, how do you position Trump's strength or the Trump phenomenon?

I believe Trump and the Trump phenomenon cannot be considered apart from the polarization of American politics.

When looking at American politics since the 20th century over a long span, there are two important pillars. One is the competition between the two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. The other is the separation of powers between Congress and the President. The relationship between these two pillars has influenced the nature of politics. A state of tug-of-war competition between the axis of separation of powers and the two-party system has continued for a long time, and that is what has brought about changes in American politics.

Recently, however, the separation of powers side has been losing unilaterally, and inter-party conflict has come to have overwhelming significance in American politics. Originally, I think the characteristic of American politics was that neither side became overwhelming, but I feel that has been lost and is changing.

The extreme strengthening of inter-party conflict is called "polarization," but my impression is that polarization began to overwhelm the separation of powers entering the 2010s. With the 9/11 attacks (2001), power was centralized in the President as a kind of wartime measure. After that, it did not return to the normal separation of powers, and a state where inter-party conflict takes precedence over everything has continued through the eras of Obama and Trump.

In the 2016 presidential election, Trump also showed a stance of distancing himself from polarization, but after taking office, he became extremely partisan and became a president who did not hesitate to appeal only to his own supporters or only to Republican supporters.

Normally it's the opposite; even if you are partisan during the election, once elected, you are supposed to say you will take on the dignified role of the nation, at least as a pose, and become a bipartisan leader following the tradition since Washington. But Trump hardly said such things. Rather, it could even be said he became more partisan after being elected.

One reason for this is likely that inter-party conflict is so strong that the meaning of the position of a bipartisan president has been lost. The raison d'être of a transcendent president only emerges when there is a tug-of-war between the separation of powers and inter-party conflict.

As mentioned in Professor Okayama's talk, many general voters are uninterested in politics. Even so, there are signs of a revival in voters' party identification, and moreover, the gap between Democratic and Republican supporters has widened far more than in the past. It was the activist class between the top elites and general voters that drove polarization, but now everything from top to bottom is separated. When this happens, inter-party relations completely cover American politics, making it difficult to escape.

Why do you think party politics has come to the fore and become a weightier presence?

If we focus on the last ten years, the movement on the Democratic side is particularly notable. Originally, the Democratic Party was a center-left party representing the interests of the economically disadvantaged and cultural minorities. However, center-left parties around the world found it difficult to secure support through economic policy after the Lehman shock, and the Democratic Party was no exception.

So they sought a way out by emphasizing cultural minorities. Specifically, this involved global environmental issues and the protection of the rights of sexual minorities, and Obama played the role of a symbol leading that. As a result, the balance within the Democratic Party changed, and since the Republicans also showed counter-movements, both the internal workings of the two major parties and the competition between them changed to emphasize non-economic cultural issues.

Many voters in the Rust Belt are economically disadvantaged but not cultural minorities. Whether the trends of these people are the decisive factor is a matter of various perspectives, but I think if non-economic issues are emphasized, they are forced to defect from traditional Democratic support.

Professor Nakayama, what are your thoughts?

I think the Trump phenomenon has merely amplified things that existed before; Trumpism, at least its content, is not original at all.

Communication via Twitter, the incitement of xenophobia and nationalism, resistance to globalism, unease toward foreign intervention, and the transformation of politics into entertainment—none of these were created by Trump. There was a situation where these were accepted, and Trump fit into it perfectly. I feel the Trump phenomenon is something created by various trends in America over the last decade or so.

There were clearly several omens. The decisive one was the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. It is ironic that it was John McCain, who would later become a symbol of anti-Trumpism, who brought Palin fully into the political space.

Then, around 2010, the Tea Party movement suddenly appeared based in the social media space. We tried to understand that as a resistance movement against the bloating of the federal government, harboring libertarian impulses, but the central motivation was, after all, unease toward Obama.

There was the Palin-esque, the Tea Party-esque, and then Trump launched Birtherism (the movement claiming Obama was ineligible to be president because he was born outside the U.S.) around the same time. Considering that, I think we should view Trumpism as nothing more than things America has harbored internally for the last dozen years surfacing through the medium of Trump.

So specifically, what impact did Trump have on the Republican Party? As a conservative party, the Republican Party has held three axes: pursuing "small government," "internationalism based on ideals and power," and "a good life based on faith and tradition." However, the four years of the Trump administration resulted in the denial of these three axes.

Now, the Republican Party has lost its governing philosophy that serves as an axis, so to speak, and on the other hand, since Trump lost this time, attention is focused on whether a certain kind of reaction against that will occur within the party.

The Democratic Party also saw increased unease toward the traditional moderate center-left position symbolized by Biden and Clinton in the face of the Trump phenomenon. Mr. Kanari pointed out that the media might be overemphasizing the shift to the left, but for example, with the rising tolerance for the word "socialism," certain changes are clearly occurring.

President Trump himself was a person with almost zero idea of overcoming division, so as a result, he emboldened the fringes (people with extreme positions) in both parties and destroyed the political culture of seeking compromise to solve things.

While there is indeed an aspect that it is an expression of the health of American democracy, I believe it is better to view the Trump phenomenon as a sign that American democracy is falling into dysfunction.

Professor Okayama, you recently published "Party Politics in America: A 250-Year Trajectory from the Founding." If you were to add an evaluation of Trump when a revised edition comes out, what would you write?

In that book, I wrote about 250 years of history since the founding of America. If I were to position Trump in that ultra-long-term flow, one point would be why a person like Trump was able to emerge in the first place. And I think that is an expression of changes that have been progressing since the end of the 19th century reaching their ultimate conclusion. There are three main points.

First, it became difficult for third parties other than the two major parties to even participate in elections. As Mr. Kanari said earlier, it became a state of choosing one from two. But second, during this time, each party and politician has also become more easily influenced by external entities. It became easy to inject election funds from the outside, and as is exactly the case with Trump, it has become easier to run for election from a party even if you were not originally a politician of that party.

And third, under such circumstances, the polarization of the two major parties that Professor Machidori mentioned occurred, and the conflict between the two parties deepened. As a result, if you can raise your own support base or a lump sum of funds, anyone can compete more than decently in the presidential primaries. Furthermore, if you win the nomination, you can get the votes of your party's supporters, so someone like Trump can get elected even without being a politician.

Actually, his predecessor Obama has similar aspects. He also had quite shallow political experience, and the fact that a newcomer with few political achievements other than being good at public speaking became president was sometimes called "venture democracy." Trump was next, and now a situation has been created where such outsiders to party politics can appear from somewhere and disrupt politics to the fullest. I think it can be explained that Trump happened to use that structure very skillfully.

Since this is structural, similar things can happen in the future. Even among outsiders, various candidates could emerge, from Trump-like people to completely different types. Looking back later, we might think Trump was the pioneer of that.

I would like to connect this a bit to Japan.

The anti-establishment movement currently happening in the U.S., the phenomenon of the rise of the fringes of left and right populism that Professor Nakayama mentioned, is also happening in Europe, I think. Also, inward-looking nationalism based on "my country first" is also rising in parts of Europe.

If we look for the reasons, it can be said that as technological innovation occurs and the industrial structure and information environment change significantly, people who simply cannot adapt fall behind, leading to the collapse of the middle class and economic disparity.

On the other hand, at the root is anxiety about the shaking of identity as a country or society as immigrants and refugees increase and the demographic composition changes significantly. If so, this is a structural problem that is not just a phenomenon in the U.S., and I feel similar phenomena are occurring in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines, and elsewhere.

Among these, it is often said that in Japan, among developed countries, populism and nationalism like those in the West have not risen as much. Can the reason for this be explained by Japan's party politics or political system?

For populists to rise in Japan as well, it would be a matter of demand (social needs) and supply (politicians who want to rise), but the mediating mechanism, like a market structure, does not exist in Japan, at least at the national level.

However, I believe populists are clearly emerging in local politics. Japan's local politics is a presidential system in terms of institutional type. A presidential system has a high affinity for the rise of populists because an individual can climb to the top leadership in a short period without the help of a political party. This might be dismissed as the bitterness of someone from Kansai (laughs), but I see Governor Yuriko Koike of Tokyo and Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya as having clearly stronger characters as populists than the Ishin party in Osaka.

Moreover, Japanese local heads have the characteristic of having great authority. When authority is great, the degree of benefit to their supporters is also great. This type of political system is vulnerable to populism.

However, that is not the case in national politics. One reason is that national politics is a parliamentary system. I think a parliamentary system, where an individual cannot become a top leader in a short time, has relative resistance to populism.

Another issue is the political parties. For a populist politician to rise in current national politics, they would have to take over the LDP. However, taking over the LDP is extremely difficult. There are a significant number of people, typical examples being second-generation politicians, who have climbed up using political resources different from those of populists.

Conversely, if a populist were to rise at the national level in Japan, it would likely be through a new party emerging from the non-LDP side and rising very quickly, but even then, it would be difficult to take a majority of seats all at once.

In France, the rise of populist nationalism like that of Marine Le Pen is prominent in rural areas that are declining and losing population. In the U.S., the so-called Rust Belt is spoken of as its symbol. Is there a possibility that depopulated areas in Japan, rather than urban areas like Nagoya or Tokyo, could become the epicenter of populism in Japan?

That might happen if the established parties in national politics take policies that genuinely abandon rural agricultural areas. In Japan's case, at least the LDP and many other parties do not do that. I think that is not unrelated to the fact that the mechanism of representation is more advantageous for rural areas.

Another big factor is that the systems of national and local politics are mismatched. This has many negative aspects, but at least regarding the rise of populism, it functions as a very strong barrier. For example, even if someone creates a local party and emerges by securing a local head post, it is extremely difficult to gain power in national politics in a short period.

However, on the other hand, one can see people in Japan who support Trump or believe in things like QAnon. They may not have political power, but I don't think the anti-establishment momentum is non-existent.

The issue of the Science Council of Japan also has various aspects, but I think there is an aspect of backlash saying it is strange to provide 1 billion yen a year and many full-time staff to a gathering of scholars who do not actively make policy recommendations.

People who seem to be carrying over Trumpian discourse as-is are appearing in Japan as well. How should we face this phenomenon? I feel this is quite an important issue. Mr. Kanari, as someone active in the major media, what do you think?

I think you are exactly right. One thing I think is that the "middle" in journalism is losing influence now. As a reporter myself, I feel that it would be very easy to become a communicator from a certain fixed position and form my own cheering squad.

In the U.S., if you turn the channel, a different world unfolds. Because of that, if you ask what media someone usually watches, you can often see the content of that interviewee's subsequent political claims.

In Washington, D.C., when the news of "Trump's defeat, Biden's victory" comes out, the city is already exuberant. However, the next day, I rented a car and entered Bedford County in central Pennsylvania, Appalachia; when I counted yard signs, the first hundred were all for Trump, and I didn't see a single Biden sign until I got to the suburbs of Pittsburgh. The popular radio shows are, of course, those of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh (both right-wing, Trump-supporting commentators).

I believe it is necessary to maintain journalism that can be listened to from any position. If you ask what that ultimately is, I think it is important to maintain media that does not lean toward opinion and sticks thoroughly to facts. Journalism needs to function not as a device that amplifies fear and hatred, but rather as one that mitigates them.

In the U.S., many people live day-to-day, using up their monthly salary. The same is true in Japan, and that degree is likely strengthening in this pandemic. As working hours get longer, the opportunity and leeway to directly touch the lives of people in worlds different from one's own are likely disappearing. Therefore, I think journalism needs to continue to convey the stories of people living in different positions and worlds to each other.

As someone in journalism, I want to keep that firmly in mind and not participate in the division caused by the media as seen in the U.S.

At the level of public discourse in Japan, there are groups that resonate with Trumpian things, and I feel there are media outlets targeting them.

For example, in the magazine "WiLL" (January 2021 issue), discourse like "Trump has not lost" is lined up. If media with a certain level of name recognition start taking such discourse, I think the division of the space of public discourse will progress considerably.

How should we view that? Is it that they noticed a market there and are pouring in such discourse, or is a certain group doing it with some kind of intention? It might be both.

When I talked with Steven Levitsky (Professor at Harvard University) about FOX News before, he pointed out that there are both the aspect of discovering a market of a certain size that longs for right-wing discourse and gaining popularity by pouring it in, and the aspect of some voters becoming even more right-wing because of that right-wing discourse.

Regarding the strange Trump phenomenon in Japan, there was a "Stop the Steal" march in Hibiya just the other day, but it wasn't very large, so I don't think we should overevaluate it.

The bigger problem is that there are quite a few people among Japan's foreign policy and security circles and business leaders who feel that "Trump isn't so bad." I think one reason there are so many such people in Japan is that Prime Minister Abe managed to get close to Trump and absorbed the "Trump shock." This is a circumstance unique to Japan.

The second reason is likely China. There is very strong distrust in Japan toward Obama's China policy. This is a bit unfair, as the second Obama administration was reasonably tough on China, but the impression of the G2-style China policy from his first term remains strong. In contrast, Trump at least explicitly showed a stance of being ready to pick a fight with China at any time. Therefore, I think people feel that Trump is better.

Thirdly, as pointed out earlier, because it is difficult for a full-fledged reactionary populist movement to arise in Japan, the dangers of Trump that were visible from Europe were not visible in Japan. In a sense, he was seen as a typical American—a bit crude, arrogant, and a loud-mouthed older guy.

I was very concerned that there were quite a few people among Japanese leaders who supported Trump, and this time, for the first time, I felt I had to venture to argue in my presidential election commentary that "Biden might be better."

Another reason Japan doesn't feel that much of a sense of incongruity with Trump is that Japan has, albeit unintentionally, created a Trump-like space. For example, regarding the wall issue, Japan has its own wall (the sea) that is far more effective than the wall Trump tried to build on the Mexican border. It is an overwhelmingly male-dominated society with low gender awareness, it is homogeneous with no racial issues, and it is an orderly society based on tradition, and so on.

We ourselves may have been living in a space where it is difficult to feel a sense of discomfort toward "Trumpian" things. Because of that, I feel there is a kind of mild Trump phenomenon occurring.

Returning to the topic of America, partisan politics became extremely strong, as Professor Machidori mentioned at the beginning, and in the end, even when a national crisis like COVID-19 occurred, there was no sign of it converging.

Mr. Biden is calling for reconciliation, but will he really be able to achieve that in the future? Trump's support base will likely remain to some extent in the 2024 presidential election, and whether he runs himself or becomes a kingmaker, his influence will persist.

When considering that, in what way can a divided American society return to a mode of dialogue? Even looking for historical examples, it's hard to find any.

Mr. Okayama, are there any cases where a divide has taken a turn for the better?

I don't think there are many happy scenarios to be found. The Civil War period in the mid-19th century is often cited as something close to today's division. The axis of conflict between political parties at that time was the handling of slavery. After four years of civil war, slavery was abolished, and subsequently, whites from both parties and both the North and South reconciled, but that was insufficient in the sense that it sidelined racial discrimination and left Black people behind. This has become a grudge that leads directly to today's division.

On the other hand, when considering the resolution of political polarization, I think the behavior of politicians must change. As for how to change that behavior, institutions and rules are important.

In this regard, a certain electoral system reform has been attracting attention in recent years. In the United States, each state decides most of its electoral system. Basically, everywhere uses a single-member district system where voters vote for one candidate they want to win. In contrast, the "Ranked Choice Voting" system adopted by Maine in 2016 differs in that voters rank multiple candidates as 1st, 2nd, and so on.

I apologize for the complexity, but under this system, to win, it is necessary not only to get the most votes but also to exceed a predetermined percentage, such as a majority. During counting, each vote is first given to the "1st choice" candidate. Then, if no candidate reaches the required percentage, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and the votes cast for that candidate are redistributed to the candidate listed as the next choice... this continues until a winner is determined.

The aim of introducing this system is the expectation that it will change the behavior patterns of politicians. The basis of today's election campaigns is to thoroughly lock in one's own party's supporters. However, in a ranked-choice system, it is advantageous to be ranked highly by a wide range of voters, so candidates are expected to take more moderate and compromising positions, thereby weakening polarization.

Ranked-choice voting was also approved by a ballot measure in Alaska this time. However, for this system to be effective, a strong, centrist third-party candidate is almost indispensable. Even so, the fact that we have to pin our hopes on such reforms shows the severity of the division.

Mr. Kanari, what are your thoughts?

I believe journalism has the effect of nipping the seeds of division in the bud to some extent.

To speak from my own experience, for example, a student who read my book "Reportage: Trump Kingdom" told me that while they used to reject people just by hearing they were Trump supporters, they now understood that those people have lives to protect and support him for certain reasons. I think that is one small example.

Something I found insightful from the famous journalist Barbara Ehrenreich is that she said she really wanted to know the reality of so-called factory workers, but it didn't come across easily, so she should just let them write it themselves. For example, she would have a worker at a potato chip factory write an article about the reality of their labor, and she would then heavily edit and publish it.

As someone in journalism, I think there is no choice but to keep going to places that are hard to understand, listening to those voices, and conveying them. I just hope that by doing so, we can at least play a role in nipping the seeds of division.

If you actually talk, there are commonalities to some extent. Then, instead of only looking at differences, a kind of empathy is born—like, this guy believes the Earth is flat, but we're the same in that we both love fishing. You're saying that journalism and experts can play that kind of intermediary role.

That's right. I believe this is something I've learned from you, Mr. Watanabe, but humans have a tendency to demonize those they don't know, and when they are hurling insults at someone, they often actually don't know much about that person.

Professor Machidori, what do you think?

Currently, the two major parties are clearly becoming "industrialized." It's not just political activities to realize policies and ideals; think tanks and advertising agencies are typical examples where vast amounts of capital and talented people flow into the periphery of political parties, becoming the foundation for organizational activities and individual livelihoods. When it becomes industrialized, too many people gain a vested interest in maintaining the current inter-party relationship, making it impossible to dismantle.

Historically, the solution to division was party realignment. When new issues emerged and the existing inter-party relationship could no longer handle them, a realignment of voters and support structures suited to those issues would occur, and adjustments were made by changing the inter-party relationship. At that time, old issues would disappear.

When party realignment stops occurring, the inter-party relationship remains unchanged while new issues are piled on top of traditional ones, deepening the inter-party conflict. Therefore, a reset should be desirable, but because industrialization makes it impossible to break the existing structure of inter-party competition, realignment does not happen.

Another thing is that we must restore the distinction between "position" and "discipline" (expertise and the discipline based on it). For example, there is currently a clear structure where the expert knowledge of someone with a certain discipline, and the arguments such as inferences made from it, are all subsumed into "position talk."

As a result, people who speak based on discipline and those who simply take a contrary stance or engage in position talk are all lumped together. This is the terrifying part of the SNS and internet age, but we must still say that discipline and position are different.

The tug-of-war between the separation of powers and party politics that I mentioned at the beginning can also be called a tug-of-war between discipline and position. The separation of powers is a world of discipline. There is discourse appropriate for a president, and there are ways of debating appropriate for Congress. The phenomenon where these things disappear and are covered over by party politics—the world of position—parallels the movement in the public sphere where discipline is being subsumed by position.

To stop this, it is necessary for statements and actions based on discipline to be widely accepted as being different from position talk. It means restoring respect for discipline. If someone asks, "How can we do that?" I have no choice but to answer, "I don't know."

I always find your stance of valuing discipline, Professor Machidori, to be very reassuring. Mr. Nakayama, what are your thoughts?

In a situation where division has become somewhat structural, how a leader faces it and how they speak becomes important. Looking back at past examples, while it wasn't about division itself, President Ford (1974–77) was someone who settled political distrust. He was a very plain president and didn't even serve one full term, but looking back, he played an important role in repairing the political distrust deepened by the Watergate scandal.

Ford was a member of the House, but Biden has been a Senator since '73. The Senate at that time was also called "the most exclusive club," and there was a strong consciousness of being a Senator before being a Republican or a Democrat. He is someone who grew up as a politician in that culture, understands different opinions, and has the habits of concession, compromise, and consensus ingrained in his nature.

Currently, in the Democratic Party, stances that stick to principles and refuse to compromise, like those of Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), tend to become popular. However, I think there is a part of the American people that instinctively chose someone like Biden, feeling that he is the right person to face this division.

From the perspective of why Biden won, it is possible to view it as America wanting that kind of person.

There is an anecdote that when Beau Biden (Mr. Biden's eldest son) passed away, the only Republican Senator to attend the funeral was Mitch McConnell. McConnell has also been a Senator since '85 and belongs to the generation that knows the Senate from when the atmosphere of the "good old Senate" still remained.

In a state where the Democratic and Republican parties currently cannot even exchange words, the fact that these two can at least get each other on the phone—such a small thing might become a kind of breakthrough. I hope this will act positively toward an atmosphere that reconciles this division even slightly.

On the other hand, however, people like Marco Rubio, who are relatively moderate and seek to lead the future Republican Party, are already starting to take a hostile attitude toward the Biden administration. Furthermore, on the Democratic side, the left wing in particular is keeping a close eye on Biden to ensure he doesn't compromise with the Republicans. So, there is actually not much room for Biden to move.

I see. On the other hand, it is also said that the most influential entities now are the so-called "GAFA" (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) platformers. Some essays suggest that by changing the nature of platforms rather than the electoral system, political culture might change.

Mr. Kanari, from your perspective, are there roles that platformers can play or movements you are paying attention to?

I think platformers like GAFA have probably exceeded the regulatory capacity of traditional states.

In this election, Twitter and Facebook did take certain measures against fake news flowing on their platforms compared to the previous presidential election, but most people probably don't think it was sufficient. That said, it feels uncomfortable for platformers to hold the exclusive power of selection. But we can't leave that job to the state either. Ideally, the media should function in a way that is trusted by everyone, but in terms of distribution networks, they have completely lost.

Consequently, in future elections, the focus will be on how to regulate GAFA in terms of information networks in a democracy. Unfortunately, I don't have the solution at all, but their influence is certainly substantial.

In my reporting, when I try to track down a source by asking, "Where did you hear that?" they say, "I think someone said it on Facebook." Many people don't even check where they heard the story or the source of the news delivery. This is surprisingly common, and I think it is very difficult to decide what to put on the distribution network and what not to, especially right before an election.

Finally, I would like to ask more broadly about what we have learned from the Trump era.

From my perspective, Trump supporters are sometimes hard to grasp with conventional concepts, making it difficult to empathize, but I feel we must realize the "top-down" bias that so-called liberals, the establishment, or the elite potentially hold.

Once people enter university, they often have no opportunity to directly know the values or what people who are struggling because they couldn't go to university rely on to live. In other words, they might feel a sense of loathing and rejection, thinking, "Why are there people who seriously believe the Earth is flat? They must be fools."

I feel we need to change things bit by bit starting from these familiar blind spots. For me, the four years of the Trump era were what made me realize that.

What do you feel were the lessons to be learned from these four years?

While agreeing with what Mr. Watanabe just pointed out, I would venture to say that I think we must not "over-learn" from Trump. It is true that some Trump supporters are "voiceless people" or people feeling a sense of no exit.

However, many of them are not voiceless people at all. Rather, they simply have a sense of fear regarding their status declining, and they are not necessarily living difficult lives right now. We must not forget that these people constitute the core of the Trump phenomenon. Reading things like J.D. Vance's popular "Hillbilly Elegy" might lead to over-learning the existence of "voiceless people" and cause a reversal where the Trump phenomenon is affirmed in a strange way.

Therefore, I think an "understanding attitude" toward the Trump phenomenon must stop at a certain point, and my first point is that we must recognize the dangers of Trump as the dangers of Trump.

Another thing is that the Trump phenomenon is not over yet. People like Satoshi Ikeuchi and Tatsuhiko Yoshizaki use the term "With Trump," but even if Trump is defeated, the Trump theater will continue, and therefore the division will continue.

In this election, in the end, over 74 million people voted for Trump (the second-highest vote count in history), and roughly 70–80% of them believe the results of this election are the result of fraud. Despite numerous statements and actions as president over the past four years, the COVID crisis, racial unrest, and so on, a surprising number of people evaluated the past four years positively and wanted to entrust the next four years to Trump.

The Trump phenomenon acted like a contrast agent, highlighting dangerous signs in America. Among them are things that could be called "dangerous ideologies." Of course, there are strange movements in Japan, and every country has fringe movements. It was something we knew, but these four years made us realize once again that America, in particular, has a climate where such movements are easily born.

So we shouldn't over-learn. Professor Machidori, what about you?

I think these four years of Trump have taught us once again what a president can do.

This relates to the discipline I mentioned earlier; until Trump's appearance, everyone thought there were ways of speaking and expressions appropriate for each position. However, I was made to feel poignantly that those can be shaken more easily than expected depending on what the president, as the top leader, says as a guide.

There is little a president can do institutionally, but the greatest influence a president has is changing the mood of society through their statements and actions.

Obama was a typical example. If asked what changed in the eight years of the Obama era, for example, sexual minorities became able to clearly say that they are a natural presence in society. In that regard, the role Obama played was enormous. Conversely, I think there was an aspect where people who reacted against that became Trump supporters.

I feel once again that Trump brought that same kind of change to American society in the opposite direction. So, the healing effect of Biden that Mr. Nakayama mentioned might exist.

What he can do as president in the political world of Washington D.C. might be limited, but the way he uses words and his way of speaking might have an impact on American society. It would be different if the Vice President ends up doing most of the talking, though.

I see. Mr. Kanari, what about you?

Working for the Asahi Shimbun, I have long felt the plight of liberals, and I think I must consider as my own issue why liberal discourse currently has a bad reputation across developed countries.

A memorable term I often heard in my reporting at bars in Appalachia and the Rust Belt was "flyover." It's an expression that they are the ones being flown over. Because of that, there were places that welcomed a Japanese reporter like me, who speaks poor English, coming by car.

In this society where globalization has accelerated, there are indeed people who benefited excessively and people who got the short end of the stick, and I feel that consideration for the latter was somehow lacking, so I think I must write more about that side.

The British journalist David Goodhart uses the distinction between "anywheres" (people who can live anywhere) and "somewheres" (people rooted somewhere), and most of the people I have interviewed were "somewheres" with identities rooted in their local areas. They can't move that easily.

When I ask many Trump supporters, "Which high school did you graduate from?" they say, "Oh, just right there," living within a radius of about 10 kilometers. Since "anywheres" have become so dominant in modern society, I have learned over the past four or five years the importance of properly featuring the daily lives and perceptions of those who are not in the media.

Mr. Okayama, what about you?

The book I published this time is essentially about what American political parties are, but I was reminded once again that American parties, which have the "flexible structure" I mentioned there, are entities that can change freely in any way.

For example, we have discussed up to this point as if the social division Trump incited and the polarization between parties correspond neatly. But if you think about it, how did we perceive Trump when he first appeared? We should have seen him as an entity capable of disrupting the existing division and polarization, by taking white workers away from the Democratic Party and advocating for things like protectionist trade and domestic infrastructure development, which are unlike a typical Republican candidate.

However, when the lid was opened, over these four years, Trump did not bend his claims but rather made the Republican Party accept them while pushing forward inter-party polarization. Regarding the state of the recent Republican National Convention, there were reports that the Republican Party seemed like the "Trump Party."

I don't know if Trump swallowed the Republican Party or vice versa, but the structure of conflict changed this much in just four years. This is despite the fact that, as Professor Machidori said, each of the two major parties has been an industry for a long time and the structure of polarization is fixed. It made me think once again about what on earth American political parties are.

What's interesting about observing America is that there are always surprises.

Even as a researcher, I never thought Obama would be elected, nor did I think Trump would be elected. There are always surprises when looking at America, and that's what makes it fun to do... well, maybe not necessarily fun (laughs).

Thank you very much for today.