Session 1: What's Stirring in the Domestic Political Environment?
Monday, May 3, 2021, 11 a.m. 鈥� 12:15 p.m. ET
鈥淧ost-Pandemic Trajectories: Politics, the Economy, and Global Markets,鈥� the Carroll School's 2021 webinar series, kicked off on May 3 with a fresh assessment of the domestic political landscape by Larry J. Sabato, political scientist and the founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. In his talk, he predicted that the Democrats would lose their congressional majority in 2022鈥斺�淗e鈥檚 got two years,鈥� Sabato said of President Biden and his legislative agenda. He noted that it took 鈥渢wo miracles鈥� for the Democrats to win control of both houses of Congress, referring to their two U.S. senate victories in Georgia, in November. Sabato said, 鈥淚t鈥檒l take two more miracles for the Democrats to retain control of the House and Senate鈥� in the 2022 midterm elections. On a darker note, the well-known political scientist and prognosticator alluded to events such as the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol and to extreme polarization in general: 鈥淧eople who think those things are over are sadly mistaken. There are more disturbing things to come.鈥�
Participant Bios
Speaker: Larry J. Sabato, Founder and Director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, University Professor of Politics, University of Virginia
Dr. Larry Sabato is a聽New York Times聽bestselling author, recipient of four Emmy awards, and one of the nation鈥檚 most respected political analysts. He is the author or editor of two dozen books on American politics, including the editor and lead author of the recent book,聽The Blue Wave, which explores the 2018 election and its outcome. Sabato appears multiple times per week on national and international news including CNN, B51茶馆, and CNN International. A Rhodes Scholar, Sabato is the founder and director of the University of Virginia鈥檚 Center for Politics, and has had visiting appointments at Oxford and Cambridge universities in England.
Sabato also heads up聽Sabato鈥檚 Crystal Ball, which has won numerous awards. The Pew Charitable Trust recognized the Crystal Ball as the #1 leader in the field of political prediction, and聽The Daily Beast聽designated it as one of the top political sites on the web. A thorough statistical analysis of all 2018 prognosticators found that the Crystal Ball was the best (Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com was second). The聽Harvard Political Review聽just named the Crystal Ball as #1 in predicting the Electoral College in 2020, getting 49 of 50 states correct as well as the two separate congressional districts that have one electoral vote each (NE-2 and ME-2): 鈥淲hile crystal balls may not exist in real life, Larry Sabato鈥檚 editorial team might be the next best thing.鈥�
Sabato has received four Emmys for the PBS television documentaries 鈥淥ut of Order,鈥� which highlights the dysfunctional U.S. Senate; 鈥淭he Kennedy Half-Century,鈥� which examines the life, assassination, and lasting legacy of President John F. Kennedy; 鈥淔eeling Good About America,鈥� which looks at the 1976 presidential election; and 鈥淐harlottesville,鈥� which looks at the events in the titular city during August 11 and 12, 2017.
Sabato is very active on social media. His Twitter feed () was named by聽Time聽magazine as one of the 140 best.
Moderator: Jonathan Reuter, Associate Professor of Finance, Boston College Carroll School of Management
Dr. Jonathan Reuter is an associate professor of finance at Boston College鈥檚 Carroll School of Management. His research focuses on the behavior of both individual investors and financial institutions, including mutual funds, investment banks, and the financial media. His ongoing research projects study the outsourcing of portfolio management in the U.S. mutual fund industry (a practice known as subadvising) and the determinants of individual retirement behavior.聽
Prior to joining the faculty at Boston College, Reuter spent five years as an assistant professor of finance at the University of Oregon, where he was named the Laura and Abbott Keller Distinguished Research Scholar and received both the Business Advisory Council Undergraduate Teaching Award (Winter 2007) and the James E. Reinmuth M.B.A. Teaching Excellence Award (2007-2008).聽
After receiving his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002, Reuter spent one year as a postdoctoral research fellow at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. His research has been published in the聽Journal of Finance聽and the聽Quarterly Journal of Economics.