Friends and rivals, Brazile and Conway, appear at Dartmouth
Published: 10-11-2024 6:31 PM |
HANOVER — Political strategists Donna Brazile and Kellyanne Conway discussed the 2024 election and the importance of fostering conversations across the political divide this week in the first in a series of debates hosted by the Dartmouth Political Union.
The two have maintained a long friendship in spite of their opposing political views. The discussion held Thursday night at Dartmouth’s Filene Auditorium returned again and again to the importance of fostering healthy conversations between people with different views.
Brazile, a former acting head of the Democratic National Committee, is a longtime political analyst who managed Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, Conway is Republican strategist who managed Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and served as his administration’s senior counsel. She hosts a show on Fox Nation, a streaming service of Fox News.
“We feel very passionate about our politics, but we are friends and we’re good examples for people,” Conway said. She urged the audience to speak to people with whom they disagree.
The American political discourse is “awful,” Brazile said. “We’ve got to think about how to talk to one another, how to agree to disagree.”
More than 200 people attended the event, which was also live-streamed. Dartmouth senior Kavya Nivarthy served as moderator.
With the presidential election less than a month away, the two spoke at length about political strategy in a close race, the role of the media and how the American electorate has changed in the past two decades.
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“If the election were held today, (former President) Trump would win,” Conway said. Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris has “got the money, he’s got the momentum.”
Brazile disagreed, noting that the 26 days until the election is a long time in American politics.
“I’m giving Kamala Harris the advantage tonight, but not by much,” Brazile said.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday had Harris leading Trump 49% to 46%, a slight lead that was within the poll’s margin of error.
Toward the end of the debate, as the discussion moved away from strategy and toward policy, the political differences between the two speakers crept more explicitly into the conversation.
Speaking of the possibility of a Trump victory, “the voters of this country will have to decide if they want to go back to chaos and confusion and division and recklessness, or (if) they want a different way forward,” Brazile said.
Conway criticized Harris’ “flip-flopping, shape-shifting lack of definition” and complained about the “presumptive negativity” in media coverage of the Trump campaign.
Dartmouth Political Union President Malcolm “Mac” Mahoney said afterward that the event was a success, highlighting the DPU’s mission to encourage conversations across political differences. “It was also really refreshing to see respectful discourse and how people on opposite sides of the aisle can still be great friends,” he said.
The DPU is a nonpartisan student organization that promotes political discourse. The debate series will extend through the academic year and includes student debates on topics such as legalizing drugs and sex work, as well as an expert debate on gun control in April featuring gun control activist David Hogg and Spike Cohen, a libertarian political activist who opposes gun control.
Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.