Roundtable: Update On Local Races, Putting Presidential Race In Perspective And Politics At The Movies

In just four days this long election cycle will be over. When the dust settles how will history remember the 2016 race? Politics have been harder for film since almost the beginning. We look at reflections of this year's campaign through a cinematic lines. I'm Mark Sauer. The Roundtable starts right now. Welcome to our special pre-election show. I'm Mark Sauer. In joining me today are Andy Keatts reporter of the Voice of San Diego, Sara Libby who is managing editor of the Voice of San Diego, and Beth Accomando arts and cultural reporter for KPBS. Perhaps the only thing Americans have all can agree on in this insane political years that Tuesday cannot come soon enough. We have had endless pants on fire declarations from candidates, violence at rallies, meddling from foreigners, recordings of older posts in questions of mountable email. Let's start with an overview, it looks like Hillary Clinton is still ahead in the polls and who knows what will happen Tuesday. Judging from the best you can see, it looks like she has a three-point lead, which puts are within place where if there is a pulling error that she could lose. She would have to be considered the favorite. Just working on that assumption, she becomes America's first female president and follows America's first black president, what will she be facing regarding Congress, Supreme Court and political fortitude the general. They have already said things like we don't know that we have to confirm any of our spring court justices. They don't have to bring it back up to nine justices. They have talked about lingering indictments or impeachment proceedings. I don't think there is any reason to be thinking she will say she got overheated and try to work together. A pundit said she will give testimony in an inauguration down. We will see how that breaks out. We have talked about state and local measures on the show. I want to review a couple before election day. Will voters decide if the Chargers will leave San Diego? That's the right question, reporters are famously bad pundits and prognosticators. There is widespread agreement from anyone involved, the Chargers don't think they will get to 67% and get the Stadium they want. The question is, what else is being decided. If they get over 50 or 55% then maybe they would be encouraged that there is a deal that could happen and they will stick around and start to negotiate a new deal. If there below 45%, that sends a different message. These are things that have been said in the media. The thing to watch with measure see -- C is to see what message we send them about whether we are ever going to build them a publicly subsidized stadium. Also on the ballot, SANDAG asking to raise a half cent sales tax and you had it interesting story. What do you think about that for transit and roads going forward? It's a 40 year measure. It's the same thing, 67% is a high by for any measure to clear. Unlike last time when it passed in 2004, there was no organized opposition. In this case, the Democratic party has opposed it. If you see their mailer, they say do not know this, vote no on measure A. That makes it different than their previous sales tax proposals. Thing you get to is, we have reported if you look inside their forecast it gets into the $18 billion total that suggests they will raise with this tax and that total is what they used to get the list of projects that people are voting on, that depends on the assumption that San Diegans will spend more per person than ever, going back to the 1970s and substantially more. Over 30% more, well above the historic average. That's pretty aggressive and ambitious to assume the economy will continue going that much and we will continue get ting that much richer and the sales will turn into revenue to be used to build those projects. Let's moved to the state propositions, one is it looks like voters appear to support legalizing marijuana. What might we see with that? If it goes through we will see a lot of patchwork, work as far as cities go. A lot of small cities, even in San Diego County have indicated they don't want it. They will just pass on it. They don't have to. In San Diego, we have a measure on the ballot to taxes businesses, if they become legalized so that San Diego can share in some of the profit from that. I do think we will see a lot of patchwork legislation spring up, in terms of its okay here but these cities don't want it. The old idea of the dry county in the prohibition era. It could be very interesting to see. One other proposition, there are two competing state propositions regarding the death penalty in this case. The latest poll said neither one is doing very well and we will stay with the status quo. I've seen people either support them both or don't support either of them. That's interesting, they are completely the opposite from each other. One would and the death penalty and one would seek to speed up appeals and streamline education dose execution. The status quo is in limbo, because a judge has ruled that California's execution protocol is unconstitutional. We haven't been putting people to death, even though it's still the lot of the land in California. That will be another one to watch on a very busy Tuesday night coming up. It's been nearly 2 years since campaigning for president began in once developer Donald Trump entered the race and blasted immigrants, promising to build a wall, the nature of campaigning changed forever. I want to turn to some of the strange, profoundly different ways this political season has played out. Let's start with the rise of Donald Trump. He bested the field of 16 Republican candidates, most of them have enjoyed political victory they have long had experience in office. How did he do this? Did he size it up as a reality show? I think there is something to that and I can't believe I'm going to quote Scott bail, he said he speaks like I do or he speaks in terms that I can understand. I think there is a lot to that. He says things that resonate with people. It's much easier to do when you don't care about the facts. I think that there is something to the fact that he can communicate in a way that resonates with people and in a way with people that are career politicians that don't have that ability. I think there was a strategic misfire by the rest of the field and they were accomplished and veteran legislators. With the exception of Carson fee arena. There were a lot of them. You had Donald Trump with the persistently but never a majority. Everyone else was pushing not -- asking how to win. This acted as an alienation. They were in a position where no one was attacking him, so he went through a lengthy stretch until he was banking votes before anybody said a bad word about him. The doomed each other, through there in action. We touched on this and I want to bring Baffin to the conversation. All politicians spin and flat out lie. They rate these things now, Hillary Clinton is doing better than Bernie Sanders when it comes to people are calling her pants on fire. Trump is off the charts. Half -- [ Buzzer ] -- people don't trust the media, anything that is said as a lie, he gets away with that. The thing that's interesting is that he doesn't care about facts. He says whatever he wants. His statements change every day. When the mainstream media and thoughtful voters look at it and say, we just need to fact check and let people know the truth and then they will realize that they need to understand his point of view -- And they show a clip. They are totally misjudging his fan base and I say fan base as opposed to supporters. They don't care what the facts are and if you fact check him, if CNN fact checked him, they don't trust those media outlets. They don't see them as reliable, they call them their liberal controlled or they are Hillary supporters. To fact check it, only firms up their support that he is right. I think one thing that will be interesting to see going forward, and all number of races from locally and up-and-down the ballot, going forward if candidates now realize that they don't need to react to perceived gaps the way they typically have, whether you could -- a lot of these things like somewhat have scrambled to clean up -- it is realized that it doesn't matter. Why apologize. He has made a hobbit -- habit of never apologizing. It causes him to attack further. I wonder if you will see that in politics now. I want to take this theme and you are all active in social media. Being able to work around the conventional media, where you don't worry about a big story in the newspaper, it's all being fought out on social media. How is that, in this campaign really changed things? I think we all have those cousins and uncles who post things on Facebook and you can say while that is just objection only not true and they mistakenly believe it is. It's easier to not know what is right, when it comes to things like Facebook. It's easy to see things that look like a news article and is not. You can pick and choose your news, as opposed to just getting it from the local paper or the New York Times. Are the major TV networks. It makes it harder to decipher what's a legitimate news report. People should be getting their news from all sources and judging based on a bet of coverage as opposed to cherry picking things. It's because you have so many sources of information. The Internet in Twitter and Facebook, the problem is is that people gravitate to whatever reinforces their point of view. They are not getting evenhanded reporting. When I was a kid, you only had three networks and everyone was working from the basic source. Now, you can find and he -- any point of view that supports yours. We're talking about social media being a big change in this coverage and our culture. Let's talk about TV. It changed the way we covered politics and let's go back to the 1960 debates. It was a big theater this year and in 1960 we had the first televised debate between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. That is seen as a watershed moment. A lot of people think Nixon one. TV had a different portrayal there. Let us understand throughout this campaign, his motives in mind are sincere. I know what it means to be poor. I know what it means to see people unemployed. I know Senator Candor feels it deeply is but these problems as I do. The vice president tonight came together in 1946 we both served in the committee. I've been there for 14 years the same period of time that he has. Our experience in government is comparable. I think Mister Nixon is an effective leader of his party. I hope he would grant me the same. In that short it, they both said nice things about each other. Let's contrast that, we have an exchange between Trump and Clinton. From everything I see has no respect for this person. That's because they'd rather have a puppet as president. No public. No puppet. It's pretty clear. You are the puppet you nasty woman. Unfit and he proves it -- You are the one that's unfit. We have, Lapwai sick -- long way since 1960. Will we see this going forward? Has this changed the game the way people react in the slogans in the T-shirts on the nasty stuff and the nasty woman crack. I am torn. I think we do this to some extent in every election, this is beyond the pale and this is really bad. Elections have always been savage. We seem to forget that. That said, this does seem It seems a little Jerry Springer. What Jerry Springer taught everyone is that there is no shame on television. Those shows allowed you to reveal anything and it was okay. That's kind of what you feel like is going on. There is an audience for. I think Trump is unique. [ Laughter ] I don't think we will have debates in the future, where people say I am rubber and you are glue. That is what Trump said twice in that clip. We will now go to a different aspect of culture and its impact on the elections. Film can be a nice escape from the reality of politics, not today. Beth, you looked at a few films where Paller sick -- politics intersect the media. The first to this make history making -- electing a woman. The movies have been there. They have been there and one of the first films in 1964 called "Kisses for my president" is presenting a female as president and it was ridiculous. She became president in they say here is the president's bedroom and she said it's not very feminine is it. She walks her husband into the first lady's bedroom and he said you can't put me in here and she said you can't come in the president's room. I have to work tonight. It reflects the sexist attitudes of the 60s even though it was showing a woman could be President. How does that play, on the role that Bill Clinton would have as first gentleman? We are hoping it would be more serious than that and he does not have to worry about what to serve for dinner. He did come up with a cookie recipe, didn't he? He did. He is vegan now, so it was by definition vegan. I'm sure this will inspire new films, if we do have -- We get a lot of first ladies in science fiction films. We have also had a black president and up -- apocalypse tend to bring out minorities for president. The main thing in those films is that the president is important but the main thing is whatever terrible thing is coming to earth in those disaster films. There is one film that stands out to me and a lot of people in regard to the similarities of the rise of Donald Trump witches, "Citizen Kane" and we will play a bite to hear, Mister Kane was posted be William Randolph Hearst in real life is running for Governor of New York and he is going to lose the election and going down in flames. They have newspapers appear to different headlines for the morning. For the million majority already against him and the county still to be heard from I'm afraid we've got no choice. This one? That one. The one headline said Kane winds and the other was fraud at the polls. We have seen that play out and we have seen where Mister Trump has said, if we lose it's got to be rigged. Last week with the polls tightening we have heard a lot about the polls being rigged. And we heard about the FBI director clearing crime and now last Friday he revealed there were more emails. What else can we take away from films, as it relates to politics today, are we seeing the manipulation of the public and some of the media stuff? You brought up Twitter and social media. House of cards did a brilliant job looking at that. He has to face off against a Republican candidate where the Republican candidate uses social media, he's got a lovely family and he starts to do live feed and show how warm they are. He and his wife are calls -- cold. There is a nice thread about using social media and how he uses that to distract the public from the Republican from a scandal. I want to mention, in your stories this week your feature you'd talked with Turner classic movie post been -- Ben. You were talking in that about what this says about American politics and here's another clip we want to go to. If we are ever going to tackle the problems of the 1970s, we need all the strength a young man can give. L McKay has it. The conviction to push for real solutions for the problems of unemployment, poverty and crime. The determination to put action back into the United States Senate. The energy -- That was Robert Redford looking great in his prime and running for Senate in that particular film. It's like a Kennedy film. How did that film show cynically, how you can sell people on a certain candidate? This one still holds up. It is still so sharp in its commentary. It's about how do you package a candidate, how do you make them look, what do you one -- who do you want them talking to, how do you want them dressed. It's all about the packaging. The case of this film, Robert Redford has been drafted to run and his caveat was well, you get to lose so you can say anything. Even with those terms, they realize they don't want to lose to badly. That is still valid. The notion of how do you package someone for the public and Trump, you may say like you look like a buffoon. He is patch again -- patching it to a particular audience. It's a brilliant movie. That is the one to watch. We have one more I want to talk to before we wrap it up today. This would be on the lighter side. This movie has been brought up, in terms of this campaign and give us background before we show the clip and this is what I'm talking about. "Idiocracy". It was a reality show. The director said he didn't realize he was making a documentary but this is set in the future, where there's a guy who is pretty dumb and he's frozen and he sleeps where hundreds of years, through this process of intelligent people aren't having children, people who aren't that smart are having 15 and 20 and the intelligence level of America's dropsy is the waking up of President Camacho. I got a three-point plan to fix everything. Number one, we've got this guy, he has a higher IQ than any man alive. Number three, he's going to fix everything. I give you my word as president. Those are some vague promises and Maybin not that much unlike what we've heard. The plan that involves punching ISIS in the face. A lot of people say this was a documentary we are in the middle of "Idiocracy". The director was on twitter talking about his film and people were just praising him and saying this was brilliant, how did you know this? We will see on Tuesday. We are out of time and that wraps up another week of stories at the KPBS Roundtable. I would like to thank Andy Keatts, Sara Lee be -- Sara Libby and Beth Accomando. All of these stories are available on our website kpbs.org and our voter guide is there as well. If you go to the Voice of San Diego's website they have a comprehensive guide and 20 of places to find the information and please vote on Tuesday. I am Mark Sauer. Thanks very much.