This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
Congress heads back into session to try to keep our government open for business. Can Democrats and Republicans work together to avoid a shutdown?
Our Dakota Political Junkies tackle the top headlines of the week, including the optics of aging for politicians and the persistent popularity of a past president.
David Wiltse, Ph.D., and Lisa Hager, Ph.D., are associate professors of political science at South Dakota State University.
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Lori Walsh:
South Dakota's congressional delegation returns to Washington under intense pressure to avoid a government shutdown.
The heat rises on the campaign trail, but many Republicans are sticking with former President Donald Trump. How many will show their support in South Dakota?
Plus, how old is too old? How ill is too ill?
Our Dakota Political Junkies today will explore some of the top national political highlights. David Wiltse and Lisa Hager are associate professors of political science at South Dakota State University in Brookings. And they are with me from SDPB's Jeanine Basinger Studio at SDSU.
Dave Wiltse, welcome. Thanks for being here.
David Wiltse:
Thank you.
Lori Walsh:
Lisa Hager, welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Lisa Hager:
Yeah, of course.
Lori Walsh:
School's back in session. How are classes going for you? Lisa, what classes do you have this fall? Help us understand where your focus is going to be.
Lisa Hager:
I have constitutional law, governmental powers and civil rights and liberties and introduction to moot court. So I am solely focused on the courts at the moment.
Lori Walsh:
All right.
David Wiltse:
Finally.
Lori Walsh:
David Wiltse, how about you? What are you teaching?
David Wiltse:
Oh, I've got a couple American government classes and research methods where I get to whack my students on the head with mathematics and statistical programming.
Lori Walsh:
All right. Well, I would love to be in all of those classrooms, but here I am in the Dakota Political Junkies radio classroom.
So, let's talk a little bit about the Senate going back into D.C., getting ready to avoid a government shutdown. What's at stake here, Dave Wiltse, and where did we leave off and where are they coming back to?
David Wiltse:
Well, I mean, we've had these showdowns a number of times. I think we've had three partial government shutdowns in the past 10 years or so. So this is familiar territory. It's high stakes. This kind of brinkmanship has become more common in the past 10, 12 years as opposed to some of the earlier examples of this like we had back in the 1990s. One of the reasons it's so high stakes and why so many of the people involved don't want to be pushing the edge here is we don't know exactly how the American people are going to interpret this, how they are going to blame or credit individual players.
There's just so many unknowns and that's why people like Mitch McConnell, people like the president and Chuck Schumer, they want to get this over with. They want to get this taken care of because the consequences of this can be very, very damaging and they don't know how it's going to affect their own electoral fortunes.
Lori Walsh:
In the 1990s, my dad was still working at the VA hospital system here in Sioux Falls, and I remember him being sent home.
Here's my question. When do we start caring? Do we start caring when we see people not being able to go to work, when checks stop coming in the mail for Social Security benefits or veterans benefits? When does it matter to the electorate?
David Wiltse:
And all the other services that the federal government is providing, whether it be passports, visas, all sorts of government programs from farms to veterans, to any number of things. That's when people really get upset. That's when it can really have an impact.
And the narrative of the 1995 or '96 showdown was that Bill Clinton pretty effectively navigated that and blamed it on Republicans, but I don't quite buy that narrative. Clinton was reelected, but so were the Republican majorities in both chambers. And what these members are really looking at is the incentives that they have for their own electoral fortunes, not so much what the consequences are going to be for the party overall and that's where the real danger is. What are these people in the Freedom Caucus going to do? Are they going to hold fast to this zero-sum game that they're playing?
Lori Walsh:
So Lisa, let's talk a little bit about Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein and some of these political leaders who we have seen get older. I think Feinstein's 90 and McConnell is just over 80, maybe he's 81. Both have had some rather famous moments of illness. At the same time, there are some very important things being decided.
How does that intersect with something like a potential shutdown or a compromise on a spending bill?
Lisa Hager:
I think one of the questions becomes more so for Mitch McConnell, who serves as a leader in the Senate, is what that means. Some people have varying opinions relating to that. On one hand, you can say he's had some of these moments where he's essentially frozen and there are questions about his health. But at the same time, on the other hand, you have a team of staffers who are really helping him with his work. So the work is still essentially getting done. So it ultimately ends up being a question of if he's able to actually attend.
The issue with Sen. Feinstein is that she was not in attendance for large portions of the Senate being in session. So there just becomes questions about when they can actually no longer show up.
But ultimately the voters need to decide if they're okay with this idea that you have staffers really kind of running the show at times.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah.
David Wiltse:
Well, with Dianne Feinstein, there was a real question about business on the judiciary committee because when she was absent, Democrats lost their working majority on the committee and that really affects the day-to-day, particularly judicial appointments.
Lori Walsh:
Does she have to stay present? Does she have to? She can't retire because they won't replace her.
In order to keep that working majority, she has to show up, otherwise, they replace her with a Republican. Is that what's at stake here?
David Wiltse:
Well, it is not that they're being replaced, it's that there's just nobody in her spot. And I think the committee will come into a tie at that point. Correct, Lisa?
Lisa Hager:
Yeah.
Lori Walsh:
I see. Yeah.
Lisa Hager:
So yeah, she's missing key things that are taking place in committee. I was kind of talking more with respect to McConnell and his leadership duties.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, right. Yeah. Two separate things that sort of divided them there in a minute.
Lisa Hager:
They kind of got conflated together.
Lori Walsh:
Our smart listeners will keep up with us here.
Okay, so Sen. John Thune is sticking by Sen. Mitch McConnell saying he's still the leader, and we'll see how that plays out in the days ahead.
Let's jump a little bit to the campaign trail. And as we see former President Donald Trump still being the front-runner for the Republican Party. He is famously coming to South Dakota for what state Republican leaders say, "Hey, it's an easy stop. There's a lot of support for him here. Why not stop by western South Dakota?"
But I'm wondering what you two think about the decisions that state Republicans have to make. I mean, do you have to show up if you're a member of the state Republican Party, or are you making a decision? Do I want to be supporting this person with multiple felony charges? What's the political calculus? Lisa, let's start with you.
Lisa Hager:
I think there is definitely a calculus to be made in terms of how closely you want to be aligned with President Trump. Our congressional delegation has not been really willing to be supportive of him as of late. So I think from their standpoint, we already kind of know where they stand. So I don't know if it's really important for anybody to look at who's in attendance and really make much of an assessment off of that. I think we know where most people stand.
Lori Walsh:
Dave, do you want to add anything to that?
David Wiltse:
Yeah, well, Trump's kind of running for two things here right now. He's running for the nomination, which at this moment looks like he will probably get it. But he's also running for exoneration or at least a pardon. And I think what we're going to see is a litmus test emerge amongst a lot of these candidates for president of whether or not they would extend that pardon to him.
I mean, we've already had a couple of candidates who said, absolutely, no question. This is the dual justice system, or whatever they're calling it. We've had a couple of other candidates who have taken a pretty firm line and said, no, but every Republican is really going to have to walk this line very carefully.
And I don't think we've heard anything yet from our congressional delegation despite the fact that they've endorsed somebody else and they are going to feel this pressure. And from Donald Trump's perspective, the more pressure he can keep on Republicans across the country, particularly Republicans in states where they are coming out against him in the nomination, that's going to be beneficial for him in the end because if he does lose the nomination, he wants to see somebody get the nomination that is going to pardon him when he comes to office.
Lori Walsh:
All right, so at the same time, we're seeing new convictions or sentencing. The former national chairman of the Proud Boys, just sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol back in 2021.
Lisa Hager, what are you watching for with some of these decisions as they unfold?
Lisa Hager:
I was mostly looking to see what those sentence lengths would be, just to get an idea of essentially how seriously these crimes were taken. From anything else, I don't think this really moves the needle too much with respect to public opinion regarding Trump or his dislike or like among people. I think for the most part, people have their minds made up and now we're just kind of seeing the culmination of the story more than anything else.
Lori Walsh:
So people have their minds made up. It continues to unfold. Former President Donald Trump continues to run for office. State Republicans show up or don't show up.
I don't know, what else do you want to talk about? Because it seems like that's the impasse. The impasse is facts don't matter and there's really nothing that could happen that would change people's minds on either side. There's no new charges, new indictments, new convictions, new information that would make you, if you already loved this person, dislike him more. And if you've already made up your mind that you absolutely will not vote for him, as I think 53% of Americans have, there's nothing that's going to convince you otherwise.
So then we go back to the beginning of this conversation. I think, wow, we're not going to have a spending bill. People don't know how to come together and figure things out.
David Wiltse:
We'll have a spending bill. It is going to happen.
Lori Walsh:
Don't sink into hopelessness.
David Wiltse:
It may take a little bit longer than, yeah. And when it comes right down to it, most Americans don't pay a tremendous amount of attention to that anyway.
Lori Walsh:
It's the polarization that I'm getting at here, Dave. This is what I'm saying.
David Wiltse:
It's the effect of polarization.
Lori Walsh:
You are being pushed to one side or you're being pushed to the other side. And that's why I'm worried about a spending bill, because polarization seems to be in vogue.
David Wiltse:
Yeah. And we're at that point in our politics now and the way that polarization has unfolded in the last 10 years. I've said this before, say it again, this negative partisanship where the ill feelings we have towards our opponent so overwhelm any misgivings that we might have about our own candidate, that it does cause people to say, "Well, do I want a guy who's up on X number of felony counts or do I want Biden again, who they vilify to no end." And they will vote for the guy that they had misgivings about on their own side. They just will not consider voting for the opposition. And 30 years ago, people would split their tickets without much thought.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, we're going to leave it there for now. For our Dakota Political Junkies conversation this week, we have welcomed Dr. David Wiltse and Dr. Lisa Hager. They're both associate professors of political science at South Dakota State University. Dr. Hager, thank you so much.
Lisa Hager:
Thanks for having me.
Lori Walsh:
Dr. Wiltse, thanks as well.
David Wiltse:
Thanks, Lori.
