WASHINGTON D.C. — As the national conventions loom and November nears, the trepidation over the (presumptive) showdown between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is palpable.

No matter who assumes the highest office, there will be changes — a fact that’s not lost on the HR professionals of America.

In Tuesday’s special session at the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) 2016 conference, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson discussed the election thus far.

Begala, a CNN commentator who is credited with helping both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama get elected, and Carlson, perhaps best known for his Crossfire showdown with John Stewart (he currently is a co-host on Fox & Friends and is the editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller), represent two ends of the political spectrum.

Political punditry may seem like an odd fit for an HR convention, but because HR professionals are wedged between keeping employees happy and employers compliant, issues that affect politics — free speech issues, diversity, income gaps, and more — also affect HR departments.

With the divided climate that plagues workforces, (and more broadly, our country), HR professionals have more skin in the election than you may think.

Carlson kicked everything off, diving into his thoughts on the presumptive nominees for both parties: “It’s usually pretty easy to tell who’s going to win at this time in the race, and it’s even easier to know who the nominees are supposed to be,” he says, referring to the GOP coup to dismantle Trump’s run and Bernie Sanders’ reluctance to end his campaign.

This led Carlson to tell the crowd how we got here. How did two fringe candidates manage to make it this far, let alone gain a nomination, albeit presumptive? He says he has learned three things from this situation:

Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson at SHRM 2016 (photo: Erin Moriarty-Siler)

Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson discussed political issues important to HR at SHRM 2016. (Photo: Erin Moriarty-Siler)

The parties have no idea who their own voters are. “Both parties didn’t keep track of their own voters, and we know this because of Trump and Sanders. These movements arose without the knowledge of the parties.”
Message matters. “Trump spent no money, he had no staff, no metadata, no pollsters. He still beat 16 well-funded politicians,” Carlson says. “He won because of his message. It’s a nationalism that appeals to a lot of Republican voters.”
Self discipline matters. “These are mirrored campaigns. Trump is all message and no discipline. Hillary is all discipline and no message,” he says. “We need a synthesis of the two. Each bird is flying with one wing.”

Begala then jumped in, noting, “What’s happening in my business is the exact same thing that’s happening in [HR].” He pointed out how median income has stalled and there has been an explosion of diversity, two things that HR professionals can certainly understand within their own teams.

“When Franklin Roosevelt was elected, 95 percent that voted were white. Sixty years later, during Bill Clinton’s race in 1992, that only decreased to 88 percent,” he says. “Now it’s 72 percent under Obama, and in November it will be 70 percent. This diversity is why Obama is your president, and it’s why I don’t think Trump will be your president.”

And this is where the conversation largely remained: income and diversity. Trump’s comments on the Latino and Muslim communities have hurt his ability to expand his base of voters, says Begala, a point that shows Trump's lack of adaptation.

“[Trump] has built a solid base, it’s gotten him over 13 million votes,” he says. “And yet, he has self-limited so terrifically because he has shut himself out with young people, Hispanics, and women, especially unmarried women. The Republicans have to adapt.”

Carlson was quick to agree, saying the race to the presidency is “survival of the most adaptable.” The conversation soon turned back to income equality.

“The key to the race is that the effects of change are not spread equally,” Carlson says. “Some people are much better suited to adapt, and that’s really about income lines. Immigration is a perfect example.”

Carlson says he is pro-immigration, even going so far as to say he doesn’t know anyone personally who isn’t. “The reason why I’ve never heard about [anti-immigration movements] is because I lived in affluent towns,” he says. (Carlson grew up in La Jolla, California.) The reason why richer communities are for immigration? “It makes us feel virtuous. Immigration is a no-cost way for us to feel virtuous. And it’s cheap labor, let’s not lie about it. Guilt-free cheap labor.”

He’s not wrong. Immigration has long been touted as a way to fill jobs that many American-born citizens have opted out of, but the anti-immigration movement has also been hinged on this fact. Some Americans believe — and to borrow a line from South Park — that immigrants “took our jobs.”

“If you flood a labor market at the lower end with new workers, what happens to wages? If you have an abundance of something, the value falls,” Carlson says. “The wages will remain stagnant, just like Paul says.”

Carlson says that the parties failed on this issue, and by proxy, the HR departments of the world can’t enhance wages. He says that by ignoring immigration’s effect on the economy, average people with real concerns were left hanging — and because of today’s insistence on diversity and “political correctness” (both Begala and Carlson say they hate the PC default they feel society insists on), when those average people ask questions, they’re ignored and labeled as bigots.

“HR directors know how many things can’t be spoken about — this is one of them,” Carlson says. “When you tell people that their real concerns are evidence that they are immoral, what happens? Do those concerns go away? No, they go subterranean where they fester and emerge in Donald Trump. This is a failure of the elite.”

That failure, he says, is the reason why so many people can’t pay a $400 emergency expense if it were needed within 24 hours. “That’s our middle class,” he says.

“You need a confident, thriving middle class and ours is dying. Both parties didn’t know and didn’t care,” he says. “The Dems lied about it because they were afraid it would hurt Obama. The Republicans didn’t want to admit it because it was an attack on capitalism. This is how we got Sanders and Trump… and now one of them got the nomination.”

While Begala agrees that the middle class is disappearing (“If even Tucker Carlson is telling you income equality is a problem, you know it’s a problem,”) due to wage worries, he says blaming immigration — a typical Trump tactic — isn’t fair.

“I think we have failed a whole lot of people,” he says, “economic strain and new immigrants — there will always be a demagogue that stitches these two issues together and says, ‘they’re the other.’”

“The truth is that 1 million Mexicans have gone home. They are leaving, and Donald Trump’s wall will only slow down their departure,” Begala says. “What Trump is doing is demagoguing. He is telling lies and scapegoating the most vulnerable people in our country. He is a bully and that is something I don’t want in my president.”

Despite being on opposite sides of the aisle, it’s clear that Carlson and Begala agree that HR professionals, and all Americans really, need to be on the lookout for how to deal with diversity and income inequality.

Check back soon for a SHRM 2016 recap. BenefitsPRO will have a slideshow with favorite moments from the conference.

Instant Insights /

Politics and HR aren't that different: Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson

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