Will Trump Concede?

further into uncertainty. The question that is preoccupying me is not just the health of the president, but the health of our democracy. How worried should we really be about the pressures that are currently being put on our electoral system and our pacity to transfer power. To discuss this, we are joined by one of the most renowned scholars of democracy in the world and someone whose work has deeply, deeply influenced my own throughout my career. That's Adam Chavorski.

He's a professor emeritus at New York University. He was the twenty ten recipient of the Skyte Prize, which has been nicknamed the Nobel Prize for political scientists. Adam, thank you so much. For being here. When I was watching the presidential debate and I saw Donald Trump refusing to acknowledge that he would peacefully transfer power, I thought to myself, there's only one person I can have on the podcast to talk about transitions of power, and that is Adam Chavorski.

And I want to start with the most fundamental question of all, which is transitions into democracy. What makes them work when they do work, so that we can then explore what makes them not work when they don't work. Well, I really appreciate the introduction. I have been at this for probably forty years, so yes, I've thought about it different ways. I recently published a book on Why Bothered with Elections, and what really struck me is how a routine elections are for us? Yes, I mean what happens

in elections. People vote, somebody is declared winner according to the rules. The winner moves into some palace, the White House, the pink House in Argentina, the blue House in South Korea. The loser goes toward bridge called back benches. Were governed for a few years, and then the rituals repeated again, and we just completely take it as routine. It's not quite routine. Because there are sixty countries in the world as of today which never experience peaceful transfer of power

through elections, including China and Russia. So why does it work. It works because typically not too much is at stake, in the sense that whoever loses elections will suffer from policies that supporters of the losers don't like, but not too much, and we'll have a chance to win again.

Just thinking about the US Bush following Clinton Bush versus Gore election that hung on the hair the Supreme Court decided, even as though it wasn't clear that it was the court that was supposed to decide, and basically what the Democratic Party and what the Gore decided decided, it's just too costly to fight. We got to suffer from Bush policies,

but we're gonna have a chance to win again. And then Obama one and we probably thought, what we're going to suffer through four years maybe eight years, and then we're going to win again, And what happened. Trump won. Yes. So I think that what makes it work specifically are two conditions. One that the winner does not hurt the loser too much. That is that the stakes in the election are not too high, and two that the loser is not denied the chance to win again. As long

as these two conditions hold, elections work. These two conditions, though, aren't naturally occurring, as you point out. I mean, that's one reason why you have sixty eight countries that haven't had a peaceful transfer. They're each the product of certain customs, practices, and norms that maybe derived from the self interest of both parties in some way, but nevertheless have been routinized.

So when you say an election is routine, it feels routine because we have some custom that makes it a routine. So what happens when one side starts to believe that it might be able to play around the edges of that routine and maybe change things around, and the other side starts to think, well, maybe the other side isn't going to follow the routine, maybe they'll do things differently.

I mean, for me, the first moment when I saw a real breaking of this was in the twenty sixteen election, when Trump was leading supporters in the lock her up formulation. You said, the first condition is the loser doesn't suffer that much, but the threat he didn't actually do it, but the threat of locking up your opponent is a break from the routine of saying the opponent won't suffer

that much. And similarly, the idea of being able to run again works well if you have a chance of winning, but if the winner tries to institutionalize its power, it can make it harder for the other side to win the next time. So how do we sustain these customs

to make it routine? Well, all I can tell you is that I know that the mechan doesn't works under the conditions which I just specified, and I'm utterly, utterly surprised, as much as anybody else, in spite of forty years of work on this topic, that that would break down. Let me just say what I heard, lock her up. I found it ominous, But not just this. You know, the first time Trump said that the only possible way he could lose would be because election would be fraudulent

was three years ago. It wasn't just now. I remember that exactly was my experience with this phenomena. It just started smelling very badly to me already at that moment. What I know is this, you have correct that it becomes a habit, and that interests are codified as norms. So one study I did was I looked what is the probability that the elections will break down as a function of past alternations in office between parties in the

history of a particular country. And it turns out that once a country has four or five alternations, the probably that the mechanism will stop working is almost zero. United States had twenty two or twenty three alternations. I calculated that probability for the United States. It turns out to be one in one point eight million. That is how unprecedented that event is. So how much do you believe

your study? I mean, the good news would be and then our listeners could feel very happy that all that President Trump is talking in ways that break our norms about how we should speak. He hasn't actually done that yet. He did not lock up Hillary Clinton, he has not yet refused to leave office after a transition. And so

there's an argument that says this is all talk. And then we would hear you tell us that you know the odds are one and one point eight million based on this analysis that Trump would break the rules, and then we can sleep a little better at night. Or do you think, well, it's just a probability and of course, unlikely things sometimes happen. What is your instinct in reaction to that, to your own study. My instinctive reaction is that I am in a deep intellectual crisis, and perhaps

my entire discipline should be. The way we study things is basically, we observe past patterns and we tried to row lessons from history. That's what most of our work and political science and to a large extent, economics is. And the lessons of studying the past is exactly where just Storgy it's one in one point eight million. So suddenly there's a feeling of learning lessons from history is much less certain of an endeavor that we believe it

may end up peacefully institutionally without a major collapse. But in some sense it has already happened. The fact that we are discussing the role of the armed forces in a constitutional crisis, the fact that we are discussing wondering about political postures of the police, the fact that we're wondering about potential be behavior of the actions of the Secret Service, the fact that relations of physical force have come to be a subject of public discourse. For me,

this means that has already happened. That the unprecedented, unexpected, unimaginable has already happened. I wasn't Jill in August of nineteen seventy three, a month before an extraordinary bloody good at time. And I remember at that time people were counting how many generals are adhering to a constitutional position that the president cannot be removed was sort of a

daily count. And this sounds similar. Let me try to use Sworsky against Sworsky, now, okay, So let me try to offer a more sanguine picture, and it would be based on a distinction between unwritten norms that one person can challenge and written norms that many institutions would have

to participate in challenging. And so the counterargument, again based on your premises, would be like this, Sure, Donald Trump on his own can say things that have never been said before, like I might not leave office, never been said in the United States, and then that drives the discourse in just the ways that you were describing, And then we have to have this discourse that was before unimaginable and that on the surface sounds like Chile in

nineteen seventy three. But the counter argument would be for Trump actually to take these steps. He couldn't act alone. I mean, if the election clearly went to Biden, and Biden were sworn in with Trump refusing to participate, the Secret Service would then escort Donald Trump out of the White House. If Congress got involved and tried to change the electoral outcome, then that would be an institution. It

would take hundreds and hundreds of people. If the Supreme Court got involved, that would take at least a majority of the nine people. And so the argument then would be that the fact that the discourse has changed is a product of one man, whereas a change in our institutions would take many, many people. So this is an attempt to tell a different story again based on your premises. Well,

here's there were Stu. The situation. I study what I think is the best model predicting the distribution of electoral vote as a result of election, which is the five thirty eight model. So, according to that model, as of today, more or less, Trump has one chance in five to win, Biden has probably about one chance in two about fifty to win by a landslide. If Trump wins, Hu wins, if Biden wins by a landslide, I think there's every reason to think that all the other potential institutional actors

will force Trump to comply with the result. So there is, as I see it, about thirty percent that Biden will win a little by a small margin, and then this country turns out to be weird. I never studied the US much, and I'm not a constitutional lawyer like yours. You should be thinking about it, not me. But the rules defineing who is the victor extraordinary uncleared. This is the only country in the world which doesn't have clearer

rules about what determines the winner. I think that in that thirty percent area in which Biden would win by a little, it's going to be a complete mess. The analogy that I like to use in thinking about this is that the US constitutional system and then the statutes that govern what happens in an election are like a bridge built in seventeen eighty seven when there were only horse drawn carriages to cross it, and then over time, as people said, well now we have some cars, there

was an effort to reinforce it. You know, some metal was tacked on the bottom, and we said, well it's okay, because we just haven't had a problem with it. It's shaken a few times. In eighteen seventy six it almost collapsed and then they made a temporary solution to it. Then again in two thousand in the Bush Vigor election, it almost collapsed, and that time we had Dao sex Machi. Now we had the Supreme Court come in, which is not anywhere in the design, and the Supreme Court said, well,

we've solved it. And at first that looked illegitimate, but within a few weeks everyone said, well, at least somebody resolved it. At least the bridge is still functioning. And the dangerous part, of course, is if the tank were to go across that bridge, the bridge might just literally

not be able to support it anymore. So there is a problem with having very old institutions at work, not by an explicit rule, not because a proper engineer has designed the bridge to work, but because it's always worked and there's an expectation of it working. So I agree that that's a tremendous vulnerability, but it's also a sign of,

in a sense, the success of the system. Right. One of the reasons that most global systems of elections or even global constitutions are newer is that they have broken down more recently and been replaced. The US Constitution broke once disastrously in the Civil War, but for you know, around one hundred and sixty years, it's been more or less functional. But that's no guarantee that it will continue to function. Yes, this is what made it unimaginable. Precisely

it worked. The system worked, I agree with you, And to what extent it's interest to all extens rules, to all extend its norms, to what extent has just habit. We just could never imagine that it will break down. And it turns out the one to cons possibly broke down. Then the institutional assistance. I'm sorry to say, the constitution,

it's just useless. We'll be back in a moment. One of the central themes that I learned from the work you were doing in the early nineties in the immediate aftermath of the Eastern European transitions was that one way to look at democracies that work that alternate power, is that there are powerful people on both sides who know that they have a lot to gain from the system working and who know that they have a lot to

lose from the system failing. And in one of the formulations that you sometimes used in that period of time, you suggested that really democracy can be understood almost as just a pact or an agreement between these different elites that they're going to alternate in power and the elections running. At the time, you were suggesting it almost didn't matter if we used elections, if we could flip a coin and the parties could change power, that might not be

as good, it wouldn't be as legitimate publicly. But from the standpoint of the elites who knew that I'm going to have my next chance at power, and that you the other side, are not going to put me in prison, You're not going to take away my wealth, and you will allow me to run and defeat you the next time, the alternation was just powerfully in self interest. Now that self interest among elites is still very present in the

United States. If we actually had a constitutional crisis, it would be a disaster for the stock market, and tremendous amount of wealth would be destroyed. Almost certainly, it would be probably okay for the regular economy, but the elites, a lot of whose wealth is bound up in the markets,

would have a great deal to lose. So what about the thought that those elites of whom Donald Trump is won just can't tolerate the destruction of wealth that would be associated by a genuine constitutional crisis, and so they will not allow it to happen. Those elites will say to other Republicans, and indeed maybe to Donald Trump personally, you can't do this. We have too much to lose, and we're not going to allow this kind of an outcome, because that is I will say, again, under your influence.

That is often the way I look at this transfer of power. But I can see you're shaking your head. Shaking my head for the following reason. I believe exactly what you said. But why haven't they done it already? Why couldn't they have constrained Trump already? Why such a large segment of business establishment still supports it? Somehow, I have an impression that a large part of business establishment in this country is willing to trade lower taxes and

der regulation for the cost of a violent conflict. And I'm amazed by that. Well, that is amazing. If that were true, I think that would be really amazing. So let me offer a different interpretation of the business elites position. It's that they don't believe that Trump is serious about not stepping down from office. That's always difficult to interpret the stock market perfectly. But the stock market seems not

to be worried about Trump actually doing that. And if you speak to business elite, many will tell you, and I've had many people say this to me, doesn't matter what Trump says, it matters what Trump does. What he's done has been good for us. And then there are also some very high ranking Republicans whom I sometimes speak to,

always confidentially. They don't want to me to tell anybody that I'm speaking to them, and maybe I don't want to tell people that I'm speaking to them either, but they say, look, he's not going to do this, He's not insane. This is a form of political rhetoric. Now I'm not saying that they're right about that. What I'm telling you is the perception. And if that perception we're shared by business elites, they would say, look, we want Donald Trump to win because we want to continue with

the low tax rates and the low regulation. So we support him, but we don't think that the risk of disruption to the system is really all that high. And the market agrees with us, and so it's all going to be fine. And if liberals and scholars want to get all panicky. Let them. You know, we reasonable people who do everything in terms of dollars and cents, just aren't really that worried about this. I hope you're right.

I would have expected you to be right. But there are two aspect of the situations which were me and I don't attach probabilities to them. These are worries, no probabilities. One is that to some extent the genie of violence may have already been out of the bottle, that militious paramilitary groups. Now I wonder to what extent Trump controls them or could control them. But more and here, if you know, this is pure speculation, and again it touches

on laws. But I wonder now whether Trump can afford to lose given all the disclosures about his financial You know, locking up is not impossible anymore, it seems, at least from what I read and talk to my lawyer friends, it seems that he could be very easily charged with committing several offenses. And if that's what's at stake, then he will fight to the last ditch. He may be abandoned, and hopefully he would be abandoned, but that he can be persuaded. I don't know. Well, let's take those in

reverse order. So in terms of criminal liability, I think it's almost impossible to imagine Joe Biden in office allowing a criminal prosecution of Donald Trump to proceed at the federal level. And I think the reason for that is that Joe Biden is, you know, as we keep hearing from the president forty seven years in Washington, he's a product of the system and he follows the norm. So he wouldn't do it. And no president has done that in the past, and it's not just of presidents, but

even of lower down officials. I think Trump doesn't have to worry about that. He might have to worry about state prosecution in New York State, but so far, there's nothing that would politically force the New York State prosecutors to go forward. There may be some things where they could go forward with respect to what Trump said to various banks when he borrowed money, but it's relatively rare

for those things to be prosecuted criminally. Formally, they can be, but the prosecutors have enormous discretion and it would be so controversial for the prosecutor to do so. That, although it's possible, again, it's possible to imagine. I think Trump's vulnerability to criminal prosecution is actually very low on leaving office, so of course it's conceivable. But I think it's a mistake to confuse the formal fact that he has done things that could get him prosecuted with a credible fear

of prosecution. I don't think Trump really fears prosecution. You've just made me feel better. With respect to the militias and the paramilitary groups, that's a trickier and more complicated question. The first thing that has to be acknowledged is these groups exist, and this is the United States. So they have guns, and not just handguns, but assault style weapons, and you can see them on television. So their existence

is serious and can't be ignored. We had a professor from the Unity of Chicago on this podcast one of

our first episodes we did. She's an expert on white supremacist groups and she's written a very compelling book tracing the history of the white supremacist movement in the United States back actually to the post Vietnam era, and she makes a very strong case that it's coordinated, that it's organized, that it has objectives, and she sees the Proud Boys whom Trump referred to the other day in the debate,

as you just wrote an not bed. This professor just wrote an not bed in the New York Times saying their Proud Boys are squarely a part of that movement. So it's real, and I want to acknowledge that it's real. That said, it's not very organized internally. These are not very well organized militias. And although they no doubt feel allegiance to Trump, he doesn't control them in the sense in which a dictator in an authoritarian state might control

paramilitary groups. They don't have senior group of leaders who answer to them, there's no financial source of funding. It's an ideological kind of loose affiliation. And it's also not clear that their numbers are very great. And there's debate about this, but it's not clear that the numbers are

very great. There are enough people to do damage because they have weapons, and I don't want to minimize this, and I don't want to minimize the handful of deaths that they have caused, nor do I want to minimize

the risk that they pose. They do pose a great risk to our sense of social order, but I guess I don't see them as rising to the level of the kinds of organizations they could make any kind of a credible attempt to take control of insta atitutions or to take control of streets in that sort of way, And I think we're still very, very far from them having that kind of capacity. Again, you made me feel better. I suppose there's a saying in Polish that a pessimist

is but an informed optimist. Perhaps I tend to error in this direction, perhaps just because I'm just overwhelmed by the unprecedented character of our discussion. But if I may diverge from the narrow issue of democracy, transfer of power, etc. This whole situation is deeper. This is not just a matter of elections. It's not just a matter of political strategies. It has deep roots into society. We are polarized, not just in the sense that different people want different things.

We are polarized in the sense that people are willing to do nasty things to others with whom they disagree. That's what I find new, the fact that some people are pro abortion and others against abortion. That some people have higher taxes, lower taxes. We've always lived with it, and if they diverge, they diverge. That doesn't bother me.

What bothers me is how deep the roots are. In the nineteen sixties, about four percent or five percent of partisans would have objected if the offspring married an offspringing of an opposite party, and now it's in the fifty sixty percent range. There's a beautiful study in proceedings of National Academy of Science of Thanksgiving a year ago in which if at the Thanksgiving dinner is de traditional American family holiday, there were people who came from congressional districts

controlled by different parties. The Thanksgiving dinner lasted thirty minutes less because they couldn't talk politics. Yes, one question that we should not lose. From perspective, this is why I raised this is so the election is over, Biden assumes, and then we're going to change in the society. This is I think this current situation undermines too many deeply

held beliefs, including mind well. It will be fascinating to discover in the next few months whether those beliefs and mine which are formed by learning from yours may actually have been correct, and which ones are being challenged in ways that creates the kind of intellectual crisis that you're describing. Let's hope that our crisis remains only an intellectual crisis and doesn't become a constitutional crisis. That you're right, Noah, and that my fears aren't founded. I really do. You've

made me feel somewhat optimistic. Thank you very much for a wonderful, thoughtful conversation. Thank you, Adam, Thank you. I was extremely excited and fascinated to speak to Professor Adam Trevorski. It's rare that you get a chance to interview someone

who's influenced your own thinking so much. And it was also a little scary because what optimism I have tried to sustain and maintain about the capacity of the United States to transfer power in this coming election peacefully is derived I would say ninety five percent from my reading of his work over the years, and so it was a little dispiriting and disconcerting to put his arguments to

him and hear that he himself is skeptical. Was very struck that he said that for him, this was a moment where political science was facing a deep intellectual crisis. That's a very open minded thing of him to say but it's also pretty disturbing because that crisis might prefigure a deeper crisis for the country and indeed for the world, if our democratic institutions break down in the coming election.

Over the course of the conversation, what you heard me doing was trying to reassure myself by using Professor Savorski's arguments to see if I could get him to back down from the degree of uncertainty and concern that he feels. And I would say I was pretty unsuccessful in that regard.

I think Adam has a strong sense that the fact that Donald Trump began to speak about potentially not leaving office opened up a vein of discussion and discourse about transition that just would have been unimaginable to use his word in the United States beforehand, up to and including asking ourselves what the US military would do if Donald Trump disputed the presidency. The only good news I can take away from this conversation is that we're going to

know the answers relatively soon. The election is coming, the court fights that may follow that will ensue, and then in just a few months we're supposed to inaugurate a new president. Whoever that turns out to be. Here's hoping it goes as smoothly as it can until the next time we speak. Be careful, be safe, and be well. Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Gencott, our engineer is Martin Gonzalez, and

our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Theme music by Luis Gera at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, Carlie mcgliori, Mackie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter and Noah Rfelden. I also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at Bloomberg dot com slash feld To discover Bloomberg's originals slate of podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot com slash Podcasts, and if you liked what you heard today, please write

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