RadioTimes (WHYY): "Reactions to the first Democratic debate for the 2016 election"

Earlier today, Associate Professor of Political Science Ben Berger shared his reactions to the first Democratic primary debate of the 2016 election on WHYY's RadioTimes.

Berger discussed several topics, including Senator Bernie Sanders' headline-making suggestion that people stop focusing on Hillary Clinton's email scandal.

"I thought it was exceptional," he said. "It was a win-win - good for Clinton and good for Sanders. I was thinking of Miracle on 34th Street with Kris Kringle getting goodwill from his employer by referring people to the competition."

He also discussed whether or not this election is appealing to young voters, if the mainstream public was as interested in the Democratic debate as the recent Republican debates, and if Sanders is helping to bring issues such as income inequality to the forefront of the 2016 election.

Berger, the interim executive director of Swarthmore's Lang Center Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility, studies the intersection between normative political theory and empirical political science. His current projects include a book on civic education and another on moral engagement and disengagement, which spans the fields of political philosophy, social psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. His book, Attention Deficit Democracy: The Paradox of Civic Engagement, won the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award for the best social philosophy book published in 2011.