this year as i mentioned i think this is the first year social media is popular enough and mature enough to influence the campaign, is probably the third big media shift in elections in campaigning. first came radio which it is part of a journey in the 1924 race i think for calvin coolidge won the reelection. radio was interesting because i believe candidates didn't have the bodies. they just spoke with her voice and they were not speaking at big fairgrounds but they came into people's houses through these radios and suddenly you have had this kind of intimate conversation with the voters. ..

put a lot more emphasize e sis on being very conservative and how you presented yourself. being very nervous about causing a, any kind of big controversy. and now i think is the third big change. it is not that radio or tv or print have gone away, social media is the new thing in the mix. in some ways it no longer emphasizes the image of a candidate. it puts much more emphasis on personality and you want a personality that does grab attention on social media. you want to be somebody who says something new all the time, rather than saying, repeating the same thing over and over

again. that works on tv where you have a voter's attention captured. you don't have that on social media. so saying the same thing over and over again, i think we see some traditional candidates like hillary clinton do that on social media and it kind of comes off dull. so i think what we're going to see candidates have to adapt or politicians have to adapt to the new media or new generations of politicians will come in are adept at it, see upheaval we saw with radio and tv we're getting hints how that will play out next year and future elections as well. >> in many ways the who would run for office, television and radio and now social media and what kind of generation of politicians do you think we'll have as a product of a social media-dominated environment? >> i think we'll have people who are a bit more free-wheeling.

>> that would be fun for us. >> it would be fun. there can be a good side to it and there can be a bad side to it. also social media, whether you look at politics or elsewhere, rewards with its attention kind of very visceral emotional messages. that is what cuts through the chatter and cuts through the noise. in the danger there, i mean that can be good because it bring people into the political process, they can relate to it, but emotionalism is always dangerous in politics because it can breed a cult of personality around a candidate. so it's, it's, there is a danger, a risk here that we'll just get more kind of superficial and emotional in the messages, and in the level of political discourse, which wasn't great to begin with, we'll actually come down a

little lower. >> mindy, john, do you have anything you want to add? >> there absolutely is a new paradigm because of social media. i look at it different than fostering the cult of personality. i think we're seeing that. the fact that trump would run but i will do something very dangerous this kind of election cycle and make a prediction. i don't think trump will ultimately be the next president. so, it is really then a question of -- thank you. so i has taken off but is he ultimately successful? there is a lot of energy but does he ultimately become president? is there somebody else who is able to thread the needle, presidential, more conservative as nick would talk about in their presence, have a certain stature but also show personality, enough personality, people don't think they're

wooden. i actually think it will be the latter, but the new paradigm in social media what it has really done, and it has an impact who decides to run, it is more participatory, it is more democratic, small d, where everybody is part of the process in a way that they haven't been in a long time. they feel dominion over that process. it is emboldened, empowered people with the information. it has given them a power to create and support to get their message out quite quickly and raise money quite quickly. that, this is where the title of this session is social media ruining politics? we see things chaotic and messy as they are, we tend to think absolutely on that question but where i think the answer is no, in some ways it strengthened but we're at the beginning of the paradigm and it hasn't all settled out. look at republican debate stage or even democratic field right

now with bernie and, you know, it is big and it is diverse and it is messy because it is hard to know who is up and who is down what day and who believes what. some people might say, would be better if we wrap it in a neat package. that is democracy. democracy is supposed to fuel the people no matter who you are or where you come from to run for president. before the social media era we were getting away from that and i think it face sill tating that which i think is quite healthy. >> leading to the title of this panel, is social media ruining politics. >> i think people using social media are ruining politics. >> oh. >> because, i just believe that -- a couple of things. i don't think it has to be that way. i know for a fact if some candidate says, i'm going to use twitter tonight, to say, i'm

going to host a community meeting in boston to talk about what is working in the city, okay? you would have 100, if not 1000 new people show up to have a conversation about that. that is the use of social media in the best way. i can guarranty you in that room would have 18-year-old and 80-year-old, a lot of people in between who want to participate in solving problems. now that's the first step in building trust within the system. then they are connected with somebody who actually cares. they will follow that person. that is the way for social media to save politics. but for whatever reason, and it is difficult, folks haven't figured out how to best use that, even though obama did that beautifully eight years ago, right? part of it is -- >> if i can just pause. that's interesting, when we talk about social discourse, that discourse you talk about is still in person. it is at the town hall meeting. not necessarily on social media. >> that's okay, but you're using social media as one tool to

bring people together. those folks like the example we used in new jersey, if you can't make the town meeting, you can have engagement with somebody. the common problem, whether millen or any other generation, lack of faith and trust in the system. finally we have tool that is participatory in democratizing that folks are not using in that way all the time. if you build trust, create a relationship, that will lead to success on e at the ballot box. there are enough examples to get there. the problem too many of us who are consultants and strategists and communications folks are used to talking to people with 30 second spot, 15 second spot, whatever. it is very different mentality on social media. you have to be prepared to engage and listen to your true self. as nick said your true personality. emails are your true personality

before they're made public. there are charming things about emails. there are charming things about those and other emails. gives awe look into the personality a lot more than tweet or facebook post does if it isn't heavily he had at the timed by a consultant. >> if you have questions, line up at any one of the four mics distributed around the room for our panelists. nick, i like you to answer the title of this panel, is social media ruining politics? >> that would imply that politics was in some pure state before and was not ruined. so, no, i mean, but i don't think it is elevating politics. i mean, i think, i think the good news that it can draw people who are feeling disenfranchised and disengaged it can draw them into the political process. if you're not watching news on tv or listening to it on radio

or reading papers, you want political discourse can go to social media where people can have the opportunity to get involved but i worry ultimately it is making that discourse more superficial rather than richer and it is giving a lot of people i fear an illusion of participation where they think, oh, if i retweet something, i'm participating. if i like something or heart something on instagram i'm participating but what it is not doing is drawing people into a thoughtful engagement with policy issues and candidates and instead it's, it is repackaging political conversation as streams of superficial tweets or facebook messages. you can, you would hope that people would go beyond that and use that as an entree of deeper engagement. some people will but i don't think most people will. >> we will now go to your questions. just a quick remind every as an

editor, this is very near and dear to my heart, your question should have question mark at the end of it. it should be an actual question. let's make sure we adhere to that. start left and to right like a z. >> how about that? okay. thank you very much for taking the time to come and speak with us this evening. my question is actually mainly directed at john although i would be interested in hearing both of your perspectives as well. in terms of using social media to save politics the example you gave seemed to be more possible at a state or local level as opposed to national one. so i wonder if you could talk a little bit, do you see the same effects that you spoke about social media having on politics occurring at state and local level? is there any sort of difference and might it be more possible for social media to save politics at state and local level as opposed to federal one? >> often times the best ideas come right from the local cities

and towns across america which are then, then if they work they get kind of scooped up by candidates for president. it then works everywhere. for candidates to start a conversation about poverty on twitter, national conversation on twitter starts on twitter and ends somewhere else would be helpful in every level. we engaged in similar conversations with school teachers across america on issues related to hecation and poverty and other things. i'm sure it can work. the question is which candidates wants to do the effort, do hard work to get there, right? it takes effort to read through people's response, right? to engage with people who have good idea and take the good idea to develop them in policy issues so it might. it is worth it and hard but i think if you get more people engaged it helps at ballot booth

in my opinion. >> thank you. >> next? >> hi, my name is caroline. i'm a sophomore in the college. thanks for being here. getting to something nick mentioned. to what extent political discourse moving to social media website actually gets people to get involved and care about issues? we have all the uncles that post their statuses on facebook. do you think it encourages people to care about issues or people who might not necessarily agree feel more disenfranchised and feel less a part of what is going on? >> i think it's, i think it's a good medium for galvanizing attention and, in getting people involved in thinking about it an issue. whether it's a good medium for encouraging sustained engagement with an issue or with a process in general, i'm more dubious about that. what we often see with the

dynamic of social media is, things burst, things become very, very important for a day, two days. then they disappear. then we wait and something else becomes very important. certainly for some people following something on social media will be the spur that gets them deeply involved. that is counterbalanced by this churn of our attention as, kind of the new thing comes up and pushes aside something else. and i think for most people, it will create bursts of participation and attentiveness but probably won't create kind of sustained engagement that leads to changes that they might want. >> mindy? >> none of the popular social media platforms are really well-positioned to be great for discourse. there is not a lot of goodies course happening on any of them. they allow people to get instant

access to politicians are thinking or saying. sometimes this is exception that he engages with constituents. twitter is somewhat lacking. new platforms rise up every couple years say they will address the problem. we haven't talked about this yet on the panel, but what quite concerns me even going to john's idea, you will hear from members on capitol hill, members of congress they stopped doing town halls because they rather do it through social media. it is a lot easier and lot more controlled. they do q&as on facebook and decide what questions they want to take. people might yell at them and way to shut it down that is different than town hall meeting and there is disturbance. i think that aspect is quite concerning. i don't think we're quite there yet in terms of social media being a great platform for discourse. >> just a reminder, when you ask the question and state your name

or your affiliation with the college or harvard if you have one. up there, purple shirt. >> my name is jack, i'm a freshman in the college. my question is, how can candidates appear more authentic when messages, tweets, facebook posts are crafted well ahead of time? >> good, very good question. let's see. mindy you worked a little bit directly with candidates? why don't you talk about that? >> when they're not crafted well ahead of time, i would guard against doing that. i don't think that is good use of the platform, and, how the culture of a platform, particularly twitter where it is instant response. what i think you have seen campaigns do to try to shield the candidate a little bit from making a gaffe or a mistake is they have a lot, staffers are empowered, sometimes, many staffs, to be tweeting during debates to have commentary.

that type of thing, that is a departure. going back 10 years, 10, eight years, there would only been a few people within a campaign who were empowered to actually speak on behalf of the campaign. now they have a whole army doing so on twitter. i would guard against, there were stories out of the 2012 election about mitt romney's campaign a tweet going through 22 approvals. they dispute that. there are different sides of the story f that is the case, when that is the case, that doesn't allow a candidate to really realize the power of social media. >> do either of you have as an example, or thought, who really is truly authentic person, a politician when it comes to social media? >> well, i don't know off the top of my head but i will say, that the advice, think about this over the weekend. the advice i would give a candidate in terms of being

authentic would be the same advice i would give one of my kids to be more popular in school, right? don't try so hard. be yourself. don't try so hard. if you're not comfortable talking about yourself on twitter, then don't talk about yourself on twitter. go to instagram, take photos of what your life is like on the campaign trail. eric garcetti, mayor of los angeles, has a beautiful instagram of his life as a citizen of los angeles what it shows. to me that shows that something about, you know, who he is, how hard he is working, where he is is, et cetera. that campaign stuff, his view of the city. he doesn't seem to be trying so hard. if it is natural, it's natural, if it's not it's not. but don't force it if it is not you because consultants want you to be on twitter. >> with that standard i think there are several candidates are doing quite a good job. trump may be a case study he gets a lost engagement, i

wouldn't advise candidates to copy trump. they got into trouble when they do that. show more brash style on twitter, it ends up looking silly and hurting them. you have rubio engaging. you have jeb engaging. hillary's campaign quite active. bernie's campaign quite active. i think they're using media quite well, whether it is fully themselves, it doesn't come off as inauthentic so i think that's a win. >> one of the challenges there are some social media platforms, we have facebook and twitter and snapchat, instagram and pinterest, how do you -- each one is different. it becomes very hard and time consuming for a candidate to be authentic on each of these platforms they're sending their messages out through. i don't mean, i'm picking on hillary clinton. but if you look at clinton's facebook page and her twitter feed, they're basically mirror

images of themselves. you know, if you do that through all the platforms you start to look very, very manufactured. but on other hand i sympathize how hard it would be to be authentic on all these platforms all the time. you know you would die of authenticity eventually i think. >> it is a lot of putting yourself out there for a normal person and politician who are used to putting themselves out there. there in the white shirt. >> okay. hi, i'm chris. i'm a sophomore at the college, and with the rise of social media seems there is a lot more political information out there. at the same time you have the ability to self-select when information you get based on what pages you like, who you follow on twitter and so forth. so i guess my question is, do you think social media increases exposures to different views and standpoints? or further entrenches them in their own viewpoint? >> well, nick, you have done some work on this. >> and i talked a little bit about this before.

i think in general it leads to more entrenchment in their existing points of view because they, what happens they seek information that is confirming rather than opposing to them. that is not true of everybody. some people will use the opportunity to expose themselves to different views but i think what we know about people pretty well is, if you give them a huge amount of information they will select stuff that already resonates with what they're already thinking. >> back down here. yes. >> i'm victoria. i lead the women in public policy program here at harvard's kennedy school. we have certainly seen that the rise of social media fundamentally enhances the campaigns of non-traditional candidates. deval patrick used it. president obama has used it. one of the things happen to women candidates that i run our leadership tripping program at the university for women, is that female candidates and women

who participate in the social media space, even though overrepresented in many of the platforms also are much more likely to have incredibly aggressive shutdowns by other people participating in those venues for those who also blog regularly, can really sort of visceral attacks. and there is a lot of patrols -- trolls spend time doing those attacks. do you have advice how candidates handle that type of engagement? and two, what do you think of future of campaigns are regulated so we have less visceral engagement is negative and hurts discourse? >> i think the first question is one for mindy. >> so that dynamic where there is a lot of vitriol and really not just for candidates but even voters that participate on social media i think is a deterrent because people are

attacked and really shut down. like, there are people who, you know, almost as if they shouldn't be allowed to express their views. so if someone takes opposing view the way they react to someone, other people react, you're not allowed to have that view and discussion is really shut down and that's unfortunate and that really hinders the ability for it to be a platform for discourse. i'm actually worried about that than siphoning people off into their own camps. is five phones people in their own cams what is reward for having a view and getting that response. it is worse for women because of type of attacks it can lead to. in terms of advice, really you have two options you engage and don't engage. if you decide to engage do you acknowledge those types of commenters or not? i think engagement is always better for the reasons we talked

about that if you stay silent or absent, people are talking about you on social media anyway. you not, so much control but participate in that conversation and be part of it and in terms of whether to engage those commentators at this point because, where the platforms don't limit and they really don't, you have to ignore it and i see this happen all the time with many women candidates. in fact some of the women who are really the best at being open online, posting every vote, doing facebook q&as, especially members of the house, and they get those kinds of comments and i always, wince when i see them, but it doesn't stop them from doing it. they continue to do it. i really do think that helps in terms of the image that their constituents have of them, as someone who is open. some of those women on both sides are really in swing districts. i think they continue to be successful because people see them as successful. >> would you mind repeating second part of your question? >> well the second part is, do

you see in the future of social media a better sense of regulation on the platforms? because what we definitely see in social media is a type of discourse and particularly engendered aspects that are visceral comments, for example, if they took place in a forum that mic would be cut because in no way contribute to the discourse or outside the frame of what is considered reasonable dialogue and some cases would definitely be considered hate speech. that there is, one of the benefits of the social media platform people can express their authenticselves, there is wide range what that looks like in our political landscape. but do you see that always going on unchartered wild west? or do you think over time there will be some more mitigation in those systems to create a more effective dialogue? >> i worked on this a little bit at one of the platforms. it is such a tough line because where do you draw the line? where do you cut it off? what some people see quite

offensive, others see appropriate. obviously this happens, even this is big issue on college campuses what is allowed in debate and where those platforms tend to lean is to be open as possible. there is always platform policy which is continually revisited, where certain things are absolutely unacceptable. if people register a complaint, they can be taken down or warned their account will be shut down. every platform has policies in place. within those companies there are thoughtful debates going on where they draw those lines. they tend to lean towards being more open because part after promise of the platform, they will be a platform for open discussion. >> my name is ignacio. i'm a sophomore at the college. every once in a while a really bad tweet resurfaces and harm as politician. i was wondering what you thought is going to happen in the next 40 years when people who are

running for office have hundreds of thousands, if not, so many tweets in their name? if that will be any different, if the political landscape will be any different? if people are going back to look at all the tweets that people from my generation have been tweeting now at our age if that is going to affect us in the future. >> or facebook photos. >> or facebook, instagram or any other social media. >> yeah, what is that next generation, politicians going to look like when we can see what they were like freshman year and not really what they care what they put on internet. memo to all of you. do you think even some of the things we see now from politicians, when see things from their past resurface and new stories, do you think it will be as harmful down the road or pack the same punch or more or less one? john? >> i'm hopeful it is put into the proper perspective over time. i remember the first time that

there was an ongoing debate about bill clinton smoking marijuana, right? and now, you have every candidate talking about a lot of the things that they have done during the college life. so we had more context over the last 20 or 30 years, i suspect that will be the same. i hope that is the same. so difficult now for somebody to run for public office in terms of opening themselves up to the history. so hopefully that folks will have kind of property context over time. i'm an optimist. >> yes? >> social media definitely impacted our sensitivities in that way, something that would be aghast and reason someone would exit the race in the past might be a big deal, become as huge deal in 24 hours over twitter and facebook. then it goes away because there is much else to cover. >> right. the news cycle has become so, so quick. yes? >> hi. my name is evan.

i'm a senior in the college. by the way i'm really enjoying this so thank you for coming out. when i think of the question is social media ruining politics, i usually tend to think of one of two effects. first is everything nowadays is political and becomes very political very quickly. like one example i can think of there is this woman who tweet ad joke and then by the time she landed in south africa she had been fired. her address had been posted. she received death threats. she had to move. the other one is the comment section. so the question that i have is, just sort of two parts. the first one is why do you think this seems to pop up everywhere and every explanation nation that people come with all the time for, it was anonymity. then it was short form. they all seem to go away. why is this always seem to be the case? this is inevitable, will it always be the case? >> nick. >> i think there are two things. one is just the scale of these

platforms means that it's very easy to get enough people concerned or kind of, or offended that it is kind of snowballs very easily. for all the good things about social media it is a platform, it can be a platform for a mob mentality where people kind of react viscerally without thinking about it, or without thinking, without giving another person the benefit of the doubt often. so it's, unfortunately that is part of human nature. when you create this kind of scale where anybody can say anything -- >> we'll leave this program at this point. you can see the remainder of it on our website, c-span.org. about a year until the 2016 presidential election. up next a look ahead at the issues that will drive the nation's political conversation and shape voter behavior. charlie cooke, editor and publisher of "the cook political

report" is the guest. just getting underway live here on on c-span2. >> with the hashtag, nj election preview. for the audience q&a portion of today's event, microphones are on stands around the room. you may also submit your question via twitter at any.during the program, using hashtag ask nj. if you're asking a question live, please tell us your name and name of the organization. if you haven't already, please download the "national journal" live mobile app. it contains the event schedule, information about our underwriter and fellow event attendees. this morning, charlie cooke, "national journal" columnist, editor and publisher of "the cook political report" will preview the 2016 race for the white house. the event will provide a bird's-eye view of political climate, national party agendas will reshape the election results. exactly one year out from the

election day, charlie cooke will rise above the candidate fray and share insights that will really matter. he will discuss the issues that will drive the nation's political conversation and shape voter behavior leading up to november 2016. at this time we would like to play a short video from our underwriter, united technologies. immediately after tim mcbride, senior vice president of government relations of united technologies will come up to the podium. thank you. ♪ >> making our world smarter. safer, more sustainable. this is united technologies. ♪

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>> i too want to thank all of you for joining us today. want to join blake in welcoming you. the video or shameless commercial you just watched tells you more about united technologies. anything i can say, we're all here to hear from charlie cooke. so without further adieu, we're proud, let me say we're proud to sponsor charlie but without adieu, let's welcome charlie to the stage. [applause] >> thank you. wow, great crowd. great crowd. good to see everybody. thank you for coming out, but you know, for a number of years united technologies has sponsored these sessions and, i was holding out for a sikorsky helicopter but you up and sold the company, sold sikorsky. i have to hold out for an elevator for our house or something like that. but anyway, and, the great

people at "national journal" for putting this together. wow, look at this great crowd. i want to put in a plug real quickly. the brand new almanac of american politics just came out and it's an amazing 2084 pages and it's sort of everything you needed to know. and, i bought my first copy in 1972 when i was senior in high school in shreveport, louisiana and, but everyone -- are you from louisiana? oh, my god. oh, my god we went to the same high school. that's right. anyway. [laughter] wow. this is real story. i didn't make this stuff up. with just, anyway, it is now bookstores near you and amazon and all kinds of great places. and there is a 18 page introduction, essay that wrote at the beginning. so, just remember that i wrote it over the summer, so, you

know, give me a little, cut me some slack here. anyway, what i'm going to try to do this morning is to talk a little bit, i mean if you feel confused about the 2016 campaign so far, if it seems a little disorienting, join the club. this is is, every election, elections are like fingerprints and everyone is unique and they all have different dynamics and circumstances but this is obviously about as weird as they come. kind of interesting dynamics on the democratic side and a whole lot on the republican side. so what i'm going to try to do this morning is to do five things. first to try to maybe put some sense into what's going on and why. and then take a look at the democratic nomination side briefly. and then spend a little more time on the republican side. then talk a little bit the general election to the extent we can without necessarily knowing who the nominees are going to be. finally talk about the u.s.

senate because this kind of, it is kind of the undercard to use a term everybody is using these days. but i think the senate will be a very, very close fight for majority status and one that i know a lot of people in washington are going to be watching very closely and care very much about. but let's get down to it. in terms of why is this such an unusual election and what are the weird things that are making this such a highly combustible, sort of a, to use a louisiana phrase, a gum bow of different factors that is actually the southern part of the state. not where we are, the eastern most suburb of dallas. but anyway, that, why this is such an odd election and i would argue the five factors are first, ideology, second, economic anxiety, third, populism, four, this culture of values wars we have going going

on in this country and finally this pervasive anger at politics, at politicians and at washington. let's talk about the ideology for a second. i don't think there is any question that the democratic party is a heck of a lot more liberal than it was when bill clinton left office 15 years ago and at same time the republican party is a heck of a lot more conservative than it was when george w. bush left office seven years ago. this is manifesting itself on congress, in party primaries and the like where what we're seeing is that the people who were conservative, moderate democrats are pretty much gone now. in both terms of electorate and congress. people that were liberal moderate republicans are pretty much gone now. so as political scientists would say, the parties are more idealogically cohesive.

there is, idealogical sorting that has taken place and in congress what that means, the people, the conservative, mod a rat democrats were sort of ballast which kept democrats going off into a ditch, on the left, they're gone. and liberal moderate republicans were ball last, kept congressional republicans going over into a ditch on the right-hand side, they're pretty much gone as well. and it reflects also what happened in the primaries and that just simply democrat primaries are lot more liberal than they used to, republican primaries are a lot more conservative. primaries have moved towards extremes. centers of gravity in parties moved to extremes. members that don't reflect that have been purged out of in primaries. then we have media environment that sort of reinforcing all of that. and whether it is fox and talk radio and internet on right or

the pry time shows on msnbc and a little bit of talk radio and a lot of internet on the left, it is just intensifying ideology to a point simply wasn't there five, 10 years ago. but there is another dimension. it used to be more when you disagreed with someone you have different views. increasingly now, this is true on the left and the right, anybody that you disagree with, they must be evil or corrupt or stupid. they just can't be wrong. there is something more than that that is taking place. so it has taken on a real edge. the whole idea of balancing competing values has kind of gone out the way. now without, enough of esoteric stuff, let's talk about how does this affect this election? i would argue that hillary clinton and jeb bush are sort of caught in time warps. in other words, they're older, i

turn 62 later this month. by the way today is stu rothenberg's birthday, if you run into him, my friend and competitor. my birthday is later in the month. i don't know what it is about november. jeb bush is 62. he is a touch older than i am. hillary clinton just turned 68, if you think about hillary clinton she was, when her husband was president she was perceived to be at the far left of her husband's administration and yet now, she's scrambling like mad to keep up with a party that has moved considerably to her left. at the same time, look at jeb bush. here is a guy who from 1998 to 2006 was one of the most conservative governors in america. what is happening now? his party has moved so much farther to the right, primary difference between jeb bush and hillary clinton is that bush has had demonstrated some resistance to the idea of moving over with

his party both in terms of positions and just the tone of his rhetoric. he hasn't comfortably or hasn't moved over to keep up with it. and as a result having lots and lots of problems. so this ideology is a big, big factor. the second thing real quickly is economic anxiety. you know it is very interesting, while, we technically came out of a recession in 2009 but we were seeing polls earlier this year still showing a majority of americans thought we were still in a recession. if you think about the last to years that, of looking at economic growth, it has been like a yo-yo, making people, very, very nervous. just the background, if you look since 1947 average economic growth, job growth, not job growth, gdp growth has been about 3.4%. so keep that in the back of your

mind -- 3.24. last two years for the quarter starting 2013 fourth quarter, gdp was 3.8. wow, that's good. then it dropped down to negative .9 for the first quarter of 2014. then it jumped up to 4.6 and stayed at 4.3. dropped to 2.1. sort of below where you want. then it dropped down to a .6 of a percentage point annual growth rate for the first quarter of 2015. then it jumped up to 3.9. just reported last week, only 1.5% for the third quarter. and so, this is, what we've got is an economy that is getting buffetted, sort of so fragile it is getting buffetted by things like droughts in the west or west coast dock strike or what is going on in china. what is going on in the eurozone and what is going on in greece and continued this anxiety that

really never ended after the recession was over. and when you get down to it, if you look at median real household income, in other words, half the households have done better, half the households have done worse, household income hasn't gone up when you control for inflation since 1999. think about that. we will have had two terms of democratic presidents since 1999, two terms of republican presidents since then. we've had democratic majorities in the house and republican majorities, democratic senate, republican. so no matter who in charge real median household incomes haven't gone up and that's so that people have this feeling, well, the economy may have recovered but my economy hasn't recovered. that sort of added a new degree of angst. all this led to populism, increase in pop youism.

whether occupy wall street on the left and elizabeth warren and bernie sanders, two of the hottest characters, people, personalities in the democratic party, or whether it is the tea party movement and donald trump on the right-hand side, this rise of populism, it has created tensions within each of the parties. for example, the tension in the democratic party between the building construction trades unions who desperately wanted keystone pipeline and environmentalists who desperately did not want the keystone pipeline. look on republican side. export-import bank and tea party movement, crony capitalism, all this, it is creating tensions within each side. then you get to the culture wars, where you have sort of one piece of america is desperately trying to protect what they see historic values and culture of this country and other side that believes culture, that values should move change with times and keep up with the change in

society. manifesting things with most recent planned parenthood abortion, fetal tissue research issue and same-sex marriage. we're seeing this over and over again. one wants to watch "father knows best" and the other wants to watch, modern family. it creates another tension out there. finally think about what conservatives and republicans tend to value. they tend to value freedom and liberty. liberals and democrats put higher value on justice and equality. like two different value systems. like men are from mars, women are from venus, whatever that book was years and years ago but different value systems. again driving sort of wedges through our political process and that leads us finally to the anger at washington, anger at

career politicians. recent "abc washington post poll," asked people, do you think most people in politics can or can not be trusted? can be trusted, 23%. can not be trusted 72%. wow. do you think the current political system in the united states is basically functional or basically dysfunctional? functional, 33%. dysfunctional, 64%. these are very, very deeply-held views but there is a party difference. one of the things in that same abc/"washington post" poll, they asked people thinking about the kind of person you would like to see next president of the united states, which is more important to you, someone with experience how the political system works, or someone from outside the existing political establishment? overall 56% of americans said they liked, they preferred

experience, 56%, and 40% preferred an outsider. those are the over all numbers. think about this, if you talk to democratic voters, 69%, experienced, only 27% outsider. if you just talk to republican voters, 60%, outsider, 36% prefer experience. when you think of republicans, this kind of comes into the presidential a little bit, is that republicans tend not to be early adopters. historically they have been people that sort, they like to be comfortable with things. they want, you know, they have been sort of small c conservative. then we started seeing that changing some in 2012, and 2014 a great deal. so it's, there is a difference between the two parties between the two. but on the republican side among conservatives, this is a visceral anger. this is like that howard beale character in the movie

"broadcast news." i'm mad as hell and i'm not taking this anymore. it is that strong and toxic. this is five factors i think help create instability we're seeing in the political process. now let's talk about the democratic side first. you know there is some precedent what we're seeing in terms of the democratic party initially coalescing behind a frontrunner and that frontrunner sort of has the lock on the nomination but then a challenger comes out and makes it a little interesting for some period of time. i think of walter mondale in 1984, where you had the outside every challenge from gary hart. think about 2000 with al gore where he had the challenge coming from bill bradley. that each got interesting briefly and then sort of got a lot less interesting. now obviously in 2000 things are hail different. with the democratic party a

whole lot more, i keep forgetting that my left and your left, getting so much far to the left and to the left of where hillary clinton had been and then this anger at politicians, career politicians, anger at washington or at least established order of things, that created more of an edge to it. but the real story i think with hillary clinton is, when you think about, when she left office in january of 2013, when she left the job as secretary of state, she had terrific numbers overall. yes, republicans and conservatives all hated her but they hated her as long as they have known anything about her. that doesn't change. but if you look at her numbers among democrats, liberals, moderates, independents, hillary clinton's numbers back in january 2013 were really pretty good, and the truth is they were probably unsustainably high because she was not seen, period of time, four years, she was not

seen as a politician. she was not seen as a presidential candidate. she was kind of above politics. her numbers among non-conservatives, non-republicans rode up to unsustainably high level. when she left office and talk started picking up of her running for president, you saw a gradual slide down in secretary clinton's positive or favorable numbers, coming down, but it was still pretty good. it didn't sort of pick up steam a little bit until you got into 2014, when you she was seen even as more of a political context. she didn't help herself with couple of remarks, my two favorites, january 2014. she is down in new orleans speaking to the national automobile dealers association and she finds the need to sort of volunteer that she hasn't been behind the wheel after car since 1996. you know, you watch that you go, what in the hell would you say

that for? i mean was this your way of sucking up to a room full of car dealers? i mean, why would you say that? and that sort of distances, she is different from us. six months later on abc, she was being interviewed by diane sawyer and she talked about my husband and i were dead broke when we left the white house. you know, and we all know that the clintons had millions, several million dollars worth of legal fees from the whole whitewater, all of that mess and impeachment, all of that, yes being of course. but the thing is obviously that anybody is, can get seven figure book deal, and six figure speeches is not what i think most of us here would think would be say, dead broke. we, it was sort of a difference. but again, still her numbers were still pretty good until this email thing started catching. and i have to confess, early on i kind of blew off the email

thing because i didn't see, i mean i thought it was kind of goofy. you sort of use your work email for work stuff but, you know, obviously you're not paranoid that people are really out to get you and not wanting whether i.t. people at the state department or freedom of information act requests or congressional subpoenas and things, you know, i could see, i wouldn't have done it and she wouldn't do it if she had to do it over again but it was kind of weird. but then when you started hearing well there may have been in some way, shape or form, some classified information kind of flowing over, whether it was classified after the fact or before the fact or whether it was marked classified or not, but suddenly things started getting more complicated. that is when people started paying attention. that is when you started seeing her numbers among independents start really, really coming down to the point where they're now upside down or underwater in pollster parlance, which in a

democratic primary fight, nomination fight is not a big deal. but, in a general election that is a big deal and that is what sort of brought her numbers down when matched up to republicans, from having a very, as healthy a lead as you can in a highly polarized country to not having a lead at all or within the margin of error of people like donald trump and things. this is sort of changed things enormously. when you look at perceptions, i was talking yesterday with the pollster peter hart, they have a new nbc "wall street journal" poll, i haven't seen all the guts of it, he makes the argument clinton is seen as smart and competent by most people but they don't have this warmth. a lot of americans, they don't like her or they don't feel any kind of comfort with her and

they don't necessarily trust her. it is not a competent thing, it's a personal thing and that sort of comes into play in a general election. but in a nomination environment, you know, it is kind of hard to see how she could possibly lose the nomination to bernie sanders, barring some cataclysmic event. bernie sanders win iowa or new hampshire? yes, that could happen. but you could argue that iowa and new hampshire have been observed a whole, whole, whole lot and that it has sort of changed their behavior some. or so in some subsequent caucuses out there but when it gets to sort of primaries, non-new hampshire or non-new england primaries the demographics don't match up. so that is not going to happen. the only way i think there is any legitimate doubt in the

democratic nomination would be if, i would put this only one in four, one in five, one in six shot, is if the justice department starts to kind of get, you know, well, if fbi finds some things and they decide to pursue it and decision goes up to the public integrity of justice department, this is group of career politicians, again, i don't think this is going to happen, but if they do a recommendation up, these career prosecutors, that is going to put the attorney general and the obama administration at really, really tough position. because the thing is, when career prosecutors in the public integrity section recommend prosecuting someone, a prominent person in your party, if you turn down that request, it would take maybe four minutes before it's all over the city, all over the country and you have a huge

mess on your hands. and if you think of, this is sort of getting overplayed, think of two different sets. think, did sandy berger who was president clinton's first national security advisor after he left the white house, did he expect to be prosecuted for mishandling classified information? what about john deutch? who stepped down already as director of national intelligence for having classified information on personal computers? what about david petraeus, while he was director of national intelligence for not appropriately handling classified information. so this is something where there is a chance that they decide to pursue this directly or indirectly, that could, for instance, secretary clinton, could cause her, real, real problems. but to the point about the public integrity section, tell me that the bush white house, the bush administration really wanted to prosecute ted stevens?

i mean, chairman of the appropriations committee? really? oh, i don't think they wanted to do that but they were faced with a situation where, how do you turn it down? turned out it was a garbage case that was eventually discredited after senator stevens had lost re-election and after he was dead. or, do you think the obama white house wanted david petraeus prosecuted, close advisor to the president? heck no. so these things kind of can take on lives of their own. do i think this is going to happen? no, i don't, but there is some chance this sort of goes to that sort of dark side. if it did, and again, i think we're talking about one in four, one in five, one in six chance, if it did i think you will fine democrats looking on the wall for, in case of firebreak the glass option. we may hear back from joe again. so anyway.

but enough of that. let's go to the republican signed where the real fun is. a couple of observations before we kind of get into the nuts and bolts and handicapping. what historically has been said about republicans and presidential nominations? and that republicans, if you think of every republican nominee since the end of world war ii, with the noble exception of barry goldwater, every single one of them has been a sitting president, a current or former president, current or former vice president, excuse me, a runner-up in the previous nomination, a son of a former president, or a commanding general of the most recently-won world war. all of them into one of these five categories. again it gets back to something i alluded to earlier, that republicans have historically not been early doers. they -- adopters. they want, like the ugly old

bedroom slippers. they want to feel comfortable with someone historically. 2012 we started seeing some different behavior. when you saw michele bachmann win the iowa republican straw poll, when you saw herman cain shoot up to the top of the polls, suddenly, i go through all the cast of characters from 2012, but where republican voters seriously considered nominating some pretty inconceivable people. and again it was totally against their stereotype of doing this. in the end, sure, they went back and nominated mitt romney, who had been runner-up before but the thing is, but it is only after they pursued every possible option. . .

that executive experience is a better skill set than someone who has come out of congress. so you've got this over here, but there's another thing that's also important. if you get a national poll and you basically said, ask people, what's the most important problem facing the country today, or what you want the next president, what do you want them to focus on? if you ask democrats about

question what they will tell you is the economy, jobs, income inequality, wealth inequality, education. a certain constellation of issues. but if you ask republicans about question, what they will tell you is national security, terrorism, america's place in the world. completely different group of issues which are distinctly not very governor oriented. republicans have this dichotomy of what do they want that is separate from ideology. how should we look at this? i'm sort of simpleminded and so i like, i hyper organized because of adhd. i didn't want to have to hyper organized thing. i look at ncaa basketball brackets. so you've got the bracket over here that sort of the conventional establishment republican party that nominated

eisenhower, nixon, ford, both bushes. i use expanded, reagan, bob dole john mccain, mitt romney. that republican party. and then there's this other republican party that's more of an outsider wing. and that outsider wing, and actually interesting ronald reagan would've an outsider and 76 but by 80 he was a member, establishment had embraced him by been. but then you had the other. this other outsider of the wing sort of unorthodox wing of the party, it's an album of four different groups. you've got tea party, you've got the faith-based conservatives, social, cultural -- then you have libertarians and then you've got people that are just really, really, really, really, really -- that's five really, conservative. that's this exotic group over here. i would argue that what's

happening in some of the weird things happening on the conventional side are totally different from the weird things that happened on the more exotic site. on a more conventional side i think what we see come if someone had told us two years ago jeb bush is absolutely positively going to run for president, what would most of us have assumed? that he would lock up the conventional have other republican party. he would have locked that half of the party up almost immediately and would have a very, very, very good chance of winning the overall republican nomination. and so does the bush thing and then there was well, scott walker is going to do really, really well with us over here, and the chris christie, if bush doesn't run but chris christie. they were sort of a group of people that thought they could or would do really well. and what's happened is they of all underperformed and walker is already gone but it's left this

big vacuum in the conventional side of the party that nobody anticipated. what was going on? first with bush, i think you can see first that the bush brand has been kind of didn't up some. this is not the brand that have left in 1992 or the w. inherited in 2000. and i wrote a column a year or so ago where i likened it to jeb bush is kind of like the teenager whose older brother wrecked the family car just before you needed it for homecoming or prom or something. it's not your fault but he wrecked it and you got to deal with the consequences. and so there's that a close associate with that is that the bush brand that was once a terrific brand in the republican party, but it's also, w. notwithstanding, it is associated with the conventional

historical traditional republican establishment. and that that has taken on a bad sheen. so that's sort of the bush part. and we've only talked about the ideological part with republican party has simply moved way, way, way over to jeb, to dads right, to w. is right, to jeb to right, has moved way over so that's part of it. but i also think that there's one other factor here, and that when i look, look, i hardly know the guy. i met him a couple of times. i don't know him well at all, but he strikes me, jeb bush has always struck me as a smart guy and an intellectually honest guy, uses not a chameleon in any way, shape, or form, and he's been asked to take changes in what he feels is important. both in terms of substantive

issue positions as well as rhetoric, take on a rhetoric that i think the guy is just really, really uncomfortable doing it. and now conversely hillary clinton was more than happy to go ahead and move over on keystone and trade and things like that, but bush is showing sort of a lot, a considerable resistance. so it's not only created a political problem but it comes across like it's almost his heart is not in this. and that the guy that was sort of an 800-pound gorilla when he was governor of florida who exuded strength and confidence, has a great uncertainty, and now who is sort of not seeing that anymore. i did see that anymore. -itis ceo of a company that dealt with them about when he was governor say, you know, that guy when he walked into a room you knew someone had just walked in the room. he just projected this year. he said i don't see this happening now. and i think we are seeing that

in the debates, interviews, on the campaign trail so that underperforming is not, is an understatement but where he's at a position where he's going to have to turn things around, but in the next, two, three, four weeks because i don't think he is getting any new donors on board, any new donors. there are a lot of big bundlers, big fundraisers that were fully prepared to go his way but have been kind of setback a little bit, and they are not jumping on board right now and they're starting to look over at rubio or other folks so that i think the idea that jeb bush is facing an existential threat to his candidacy, i think that's very, very, very real at this point. and then you saw scott walker and the just sort of had this great brand internet skills are

probably didn't just match the brand so he's gone. again, backing. and then chris christie. chris christie, a lot of his momentum was back when it was uncertain about whether jeb bush would run about a think a lot of people who are pushing christie, particularly and the sort of new york metropolitan area, new jersey, all of that, that once it became clear that jeb bush was going to run its sort of like the wind came out of kristi sayles. and then you had th the bridge s and then a little bit, not that much but a little bit of new jersey state finances. but the fourth thing is that once is -- what is chris christie's shtick. i'm an critical of them because i think it is who he is, the truth teller, the big tough guy that's going to tell the truth. he got out of trump to. donald trump basically stole his act.

trump and chris christie are totally different people, but that role sort of got stolen. watch chrisite in the debates, he's actually i think he's pretty good, but he's never been able to sort of recover our match up to what those expectations were. and then you get to, let's do marco rubio and john kasich next and then we'll go over to the other side of the party. with marco rubio, to me you are looking at the best rock element if we're talking about sports you would say that marco rubio is the best all round athlete in this race, that he scott a very, very, very good skill set, and that when he announced come if you look at his announcement speech, in terms of skills but also in terms of reach, if you

look at his announcement speech it was about hope, opportunity, the american dream. it was a sweeping aspirational aspirational speech that was not unlike obama i might add. but think about it is the next night i had dinner with a democratic strategist who said, was like you know, a democrat could have given 80% of rubio's speech because it wasn't ideological. it wasn't partisan. it was a message that could resonate across a lot of lines and particularly to independent and moderate voters. that's really good, the fact is clinton folks have been terrified of marco rubio from the very beginning both in terms of the obvious going after latino voters by the other thing is going after younger voters were republicans or that such a really hard time. at the republican can just close the gap. for example, obama's strongest age group in the 2020 election

was 18-29-year-olds. he got come the one that grew by 23-point margin. mitt romney's best group, 65 and older. he won them by 12. if a republican can type in to the democratic margin for younger voters, wow, that would be huge. the problem though is that he's running a general election campaign not unlike bush but while running for republican presidential nomination. in other words, he needs to be throwing red meat to the party base and he hasn't been throwing that kind ofred meat, which is why i think rubio, he's moving up in the polls but not moving out at a pace that you might think that it's because he seems to be run as much in a general election asked for a nomination. and i suspect that kind of needs to change. and then you get to john kasich, and i knew john some back when he was in the house that i like him a lot.

i haven't seen since he became governor, and i would say just as marco rubio has the best skill set, i would argue that john kasich is probably the most qualified person running in either party right now, if you think about it. 18 years as a member of the house back when he was a functioning institution, remember that, house armed services committee the entire time he was there which is checking that national security box. governor of ohio. that's kind of a big deal. then you think wade, it's ohio, the republicans ever won the presidency without winning ohio. if you look sort of ideological where he is, and always out of the electorate as like a bell curve, a slightly asymmetric where the center is probably sort of maybe 40, 45-yard line on the right side because the country is little more conservative but slightly

asymmetric. and john kasich is sort of on the 35, 40-yard line something like that, which is in the same sort of zone with bush and rubio. and so it's not optimal to win a republican nomination but boy, which ar sure as sick as a prety good place to be in a general election. and so case it has always strengths, but then he's got one shortcoming. and that is that anakin i alluded earlier, said that i have adhd, which is no surprise to people here that work with me, that adderall or ritalin would probably john -- would probably change of john kasich's life. you've never seen a high-stakes councilperson as unfocused and undisciplined ask john kasich. and whether it's watching his announcement speech that was a sort of, put it contrast with

ted cruz. ted cruz gets up, he does this announcement speech that he had memorized and get a great, it was just absolutely scripted and perfectly delivered. but what about kasich? there was not a teleprompter. i don't think there was a speech written to be honest. he just kind of got up and went on this stream of consciousness thing for close to 50 minutes. john, john, hey. this is kind of an important event, that sort of thing. i'm aware of a fund-raising phone calls he made within the last month to someone, and this guy, big republican donor type, and very wealthy person, and it became clear that kasich was having a lease one, possibly two other conversations with people in the room with was on the phone to this really, really rich donor type. and the guy finally said john,

if you want to talk to me on the phone, call me when you're not having other conversations. and it's like you can't do that. anyway, so point of all this is i think that if bush doesn't get stuck together real quickly, and i think, it may not quite be too late, but you're going to see rubio take this sort of conventional thing. christie is showing some signs of life in things but i think it's going to be more rubio. let's go over to the exotic site. i've got to really, really, really speed up here. donald trump is clearly, you know, tapping into this visceral anger. it's like giving the finger to career politicians into the establishment. or let me do it differently. let's say you have people that are sort of a strange from the establishment and are looking for whatever is the absolute opposite of a politician.

that's what they want. but for different people that's different things. and so for some and it tends to skew a little bit more blue collar, little bit more mail, a little bit younger but not exclusively in any of those things. their idea of how is donald trump argues the opposite of a politician in their mind. he's angry. he says what's on his mind. he doesn't care what anybody thinks. and it's a pretty good act. and so one group gravitated to him, but then there's a second group and these are not people, they are people just as estranged but they are not angry so much. and these are people that are gravitating to ben carson your and they see him as a kind, decent, gentlemen, and gentlemen, if they see him as someone, focus groups say he is a role model. they see him as someone that

this is what politicians ought to be like, tell the truth and are fundamentally decent people. and so in their mind and it tends to skew a little more white collar an upscale, deeply religious. not all of them but a lot of it is about religion. but in their mind to ben carson is the opposite. then and a somewhat smaller group its carly fiorina. hardcharging woman, this is person but just doesn't fit the mold of a career politician either over here. and so a lot of it is socio- economics, temperamental, what are you looking for of people in this half of the party. keep in mind by the way that we think the republican party at the party of country club with an upscale people and all that. that's exaggeration but it was never completely that true but it wasn't entirely untrue either. keep in mind now that roughly

half of the republican party is college-educated but roughly half is not. a lot of these people are or their parents may be, were conservative democrats who moved over into the republican party and have really over the last 50 years and it completely changed the mix of the republican party. they have moved over. the thing is i think my colleague amy walter roda called over the summer when she said wrote a column over the summer where she said summer is for dating and winter is for mating. and i thought, you know, i've heard republican voters say, particularly last summer that this was like walking into a baskin robbins and there are 31 flavors of candidates out there, and they of the little wooden spoon. beer tasting a little bit of all of them and they're having a great time. the establishment is petrified

but the voters are having a great time because they never had a selection that was quite like this. the question is, we have already seen trump's averages start to come down. also carson has sort of supplanted in its own. let me do a brief rant for a second. you can see people in the press, and non-press, they will gravitate, whatever is the new poll, even though they have no earthly idea and who the poster is, nobody has ever heard of his pollster before, and dislike polls have become a commodity. they are all the same. in a few years back out of atlanta, turned out they were just making stuff up. i saw this morning some people on a morning show who were going crazy over a couple state polls

that i never heard of the pollster before, ever. and like, you know, any of you. what's your mother's maiden name? [inaudible] just came out with a poll. that shows, everything is you can get it on television. i shouldn't say this. this is on c-span, so i will. and they give it just as much credence as if it was nbc/wall street journal or abc pollster, cbs "new york times" poll. really? okay, i'm done. i think that as it gets closer to february 1 iowa caucus, federal aid new hampshire primary, i think it's as you get from this digging around phase or having all bit of this or that, i really come editing we already see it with trump. the act, the novelty is wearing off.

the is starting to wear thin and people are noticing that he knows there is very little about very, very few of these things. and you start to see a kind of state. i think arsenal will have some legs and that you'll last longer. the funny thing, people, the trump ben carson vote is not interchangeable. because, take for the carson type of voters they see donald trump as this vein and profane man who brags about having been on the cover of playboy magazine, fully clothed. that's a little inconsistent with the people, the deeply religious faith-based people who are backing ben carson, who is the antithesis of the donald trump. and so we're talking a different constituencies here, but when you listen to carson, first of all, as a neurosurgeon, gosh knows the guys probably got twice the iq points of any of us

in this room, but the thing about it is when you think, would you listen to it very clear he knows very, very, very little about any of these things. and that, when you are been trying to talk about that debt, was asked about the debt limit recently come into became clear he didn't know what it was. at the question is want to get into caucuses and primaries, once they get for messing around, dating around down to getting into who is going to be the republican nominee? who can win a general election? who they want to be the commander-in-chief to deal with all these problems? i would suspect you're going to see this start to kind of fade down a little bit. and i think it's going to go to someone, this more exotic wing of the nomination. it's going to come to someone who is the vehicle for that anger, that outsider, but knows more than sort of, is not quite

as sort of flawed in one way or another. and, obviously, trump ben carson are very different people than some of these others. could it be a carly fiorina? could it be a ted cruz? fukuda be? carly fiorina in a funny sort of way, i know i'm over time here, but carly fiorina to me is a great example of how, of how someone who's never held elected office and shouldn't necessarily know a lot about this policy -- foreign policy issues and things, she has that been to school. she has studied this stuff. she knows these issues inside and out and she has honed in. she is on message. the thing about it is what carson and trump don't understand about public policy, clearly fiorina has figured it out and she's, and she is, watch in these debates.

she is really, really, really very good. but i think fiorina challenges of this. besides the fact it doesn't into a campaign that are neither which is a dealbreaker once you get into primaries and caucuses that above and beyond that is who's going to control her narrative. is her narrative going to be a smart, decisive ceo of a company in a very difficult time for the industry who had a board that went rogue on her and pushed her out? is that going to be her narrative? or is her narrative going to be a flawed and failed ceo who was pushed out and has become sort of untouchable in some ways? i mean, usually, think about baseball or football. and manager, a coach, whatever, they get fired from what team. what happens? they pop back up someplace else. ceos are often times like

that. weirded carly fiorina pop back up a quick article on corporate boards. you can make a fabulous living upon the boards of big companies and as a woman, former ceo of a big company. you want to thank him for teen boards, and other than taiwan semiconductor i've never heard of any company that put her on a board. so you think that's sort of, tells me the narrative is likely to go at that place where. indicate a ted cruz. now remember i talked about how transport me been the most qualified of sort of this republican candidates and that rubio probably had the best skill set in terms of -- one thing that rubio, that the arena and ted cruz shared relentlessly focused discipline company, they

are absolutely on task and nothing you could say or do will sort of peel them off of what they are going to see which is a very, very out of a commodity in politics. but to me when i look at ted cruz, look, i'm rush into the very middle of the road guide, i don't agree with a ted cruz on a whole lot but when several of us had dinner with him last year and just in the back of a steakhouse, and just sitting across table and listening to him, that cruz said things to do before i would've thought were crazy, and that the next day i did, in fact, think were crazy. but you know what? when he said it it didn't sound crazy. [laughter] in fact it made a heckuva lot of sense. and to me this guy is brilliant, number two, he's a very, very, very skilled communicator. it's not, you can listen to a wow, this guy really was a

championship debater in college. and then finally he is focused and he's got a strategy. and you notice he's never criticized trump. he's never criticized carson because he wants to inherit. epa's that their support is going to start helping off and we are already starting to see trump melt off and he wants to be there to be the remainder man, to sort of pick up the support. and you don't do it by telling people that their first choice was a stupid first choice. that's not how you do it. and so on watching cruz as the guide that i think come at a don't have data to support this comment is most likely to be the person that inherits this outsider more exotic side of the republican party. and so that the i see. real quickly, ma first of all this election will be about change and to be what kind of change want, risky change, or more safe form of change but that was something that was said

the other day. what kind of change do you want? but to me you said is this going to be time for change election without changing american demographics if it's time for a change, that almost inevitably leads toward republicans winning it. if it's more about demographics that can be a real, real real challenge for the republican party. and this is going to be come one thing is we're waiting to get the rest of the new nbc/wall street journal poll. they are september poll i know that asked which was a democrat or republican elected president? it was i think either 37-37 or 37-38. dead even. that's what this thing starts off and then candidates, events, circumstances kind of sort of start leaving it one way or the other. sort of watch that. real quickly the senate and we need to open it up. the senate come everybody in this room knows is other people will be watching c-span we know the senate 54 republicans, recent democrats.

if they hold the white house five seats if they don't. one thing that's important remember about the senate, and that is that we've gone of late into this boom-bust cycle. john edwards used to talk about to americans. and i agree except i don't do the haves and have-nots. i the presidential election america and midterm election america. in presidential election america the turnout is big, broad, diverse. it looks like the country. it looks like with the census bureau reports. but midterm elections turnout is all about 60% as i got older, whiter, more conservative, more republican. and so when you see that it's just a different different, different in private over having his 2008 democrats have a great year, when the president to come pick up seats in the house and senate the 2010 republicans have a great year, pick up a seat. 2012 presidential your again,

democrats get reelected and the presidency, pick up seats in both houses of the senate to increase this boom-bust cycle but keep in mind six returned msn. if you're republican and elected in a midterm election year, congratulations. future study, he won with a 70-mile our wind at your back but guess what. six years later you are up in a presidential year, or the other way around, you're a democrat, congratulations. you decided 70-mile our wind at your back. six years later you're up in a midterm election. really different. in 2014 democrats had a whole bunch of seats up and they were in really, really, really red republican states and they just got completely hosed. that's a political science term. [laughter] 2016, the shoe is on the other foot that republicans had 24 comedies of the seats that were up in the 2010 republican way to election. republicans have 24 seats up, democrats only 10 but more

importantly republicans have seven seats that are up in states that obama carried in 2012, seven. the our zero democratic seats up in romney state. one of those republican states, one of those republican seats is in an obama state, chuck grassley, in iowa and is not going to lose. basically you get sick republic and seats that are in real, real real danger here and conversely you won't have one on the democratic side. that's in nevada. if you ask each side what is one more and republicans would love to talk about colorado but that does a lookup promising against michael bennet the democrats would like to see richard burr in north carolina but i think it is going to happen to either. it's six in one. you look at illinois, good guy, but if he got reelected would be an enormous upsets. frankly, i think ron johnson in

wisconsin would be something of an upset. then you look at some of the republicans were you whe where t into upset category the republican incumbent veteran states that obama carried that have really significant challenges, rob portman in ohio, pat toomey in pennsylvania, kelly ayotte in new hampshire and then finally marco rubio's open seat in florida. six seats that are full of a versus harry reid's open seat in nevada is the only one on the democratic side. in my mind, if, i would bet you that if you went to mitch mcconnell, educate them to shut up so into the fall educate them a shot, a choice -- sodium pentothal -- you want a ticket to see the senate loss or do what you take your chances in the election? i bet you would take that to see lost and run like a thief.

that would be i think pretty realistically the best case scenario for republicans dropping from 54 to 52 to i personally think that a three seat loss is more plausible. it would take republicans down to 51. wow, that starts getting close, and for seats is entirely possible. that's 50/50 and which would've the presidential race going to go in terms of tiebreaking in the synagogues and five seats is not out of the question. also keep in mind some of the very close senate state race are some of the closest presidential. like florida, like ohio, like new hampshire, like nevada. so that it's not necessarily true that as it goes presidential it will also go in the senate. but keep in mind whatever the turnout dynamics, what of the issue agenda, what is going on in each of these states for one is also there on the other. so that there is some connection

to that you could see more of a pop one or the other. so we are looking at a real pac of the race for the senate. underneath what is one of the weirdest and most fun presidential races we have ever seen. i've gone over time but i know quite a great time for some questions or comments or accusations. i know we've got some microphones here and i'm told there's also a way to tweak questions in, so those of you watching elsewhere can do that. but questions, comments, accusations. i think you were supposed to state your name and what organization you are representing or with. anybody? my god. that answer -- you have some.

>> these are two good ones. first, how can establishment republicans went in a populist friendly year? and i guess, that's a great, great, great question, although to me come is more populist. carson is less am so that populism is going on but it's not the only thing going on. and to me i don't really call what cars is doing as populism. it's something different and it's something that's making meaningful, but i think it's something that's other than populism. that's a really good question. and where clearly come into one or two things happened to be the republicans completed change their stripes and do something they've only done once since the end of world war ii, or it's more like 2012 like the sort of flowed with all this and really kind of want t to do this and it didn't do that. that's one course. the other course is a just go

with someone that's outside of the box, or that is running from the outside. see, that is sort of my cruz argument, is he is an outsider but he knows this. is got better candidate skills than trump or carson. these smart. you knows this step if you knows the issues and empathetic he would be, i think very, very, very formidable. that's why think you could have a somewhat populist our outsider run and possibly win the republican nomination, but that it is one that's got, that does have some of the shortcomings, candidate shortcomings that both trump and the carson have. but let's face it republican establishment is under siege. .com look at what happened to the rnc after the last debate. you try to shift as quickly as they can from being defense to offense again.

and with mixed if any success. howell, if, contrary one turn things around? -- how, if, can jeb turn things around? i think it's time to put an edge back into look, i have a very high opinion of the jeb bush. i give him a b12 shot. i personally like five our energies and just pound them away, and maybe a little bit more, some caffeine, you know. and say, you know, and you know how you kind of, you have seen before football games were some of the football players bang heads before the game. it's like a pair of rams. just sort of liking themselves up for again. and this guy needs to get psyched up. i mean, if i were, i would say, i would say whatever i needed to

say. you want to go to thanksgiving having -- look across the table -- i would say whatever i needed to say to get them angry, to get them passionate and to sort of get him to show that this is, that this is not something, and i don't think he thinks that it's his right or that he's inheriting it or anything. no, i don't think that at all but i think that is the perception that is out there, and that he is a different person than his brother. made his better, maybe it's not. he's a different person. but to be honest i don't think this is a campaign problem. i think this is just, i think he's got rotten luck about what, when he is up. handy when the florida congress race and 94 and w. not, the whole world may be a lot differently but it's about timing and he's got to show that he desperately desperately wants this. and as he said the other day, not gently convincing would she

wanone males first thing in the morning. more questions? yes, sir. there's a mic right there. >> given the way the impact of donald trump's campaign turned this into basically a schoolyard type politics, how do you see that impacting campaigns going forward? will they be more, less genteel? >> wow. well, i don't know. i kind of think gentility started going out of style a while back, because i think, but these trump going to be a role model for some candidacies and the candidates of the future? yeah, i think so. i think so. i think there's only one donald trump and that's something that probably a lot of us are grateful for -- [laughter] you know, and he really is something i've a performance

artist, and you know, it's funny for a guy who's never been involved in politics before he seems to a very, very real understanding of how the media works, how to manipulate the media, how to take advantage of it, which is an interesting person who someone who has never run for anything before. but i am tempted to say that trump is part of a trend that we are seeing towards more outsized, more passionate, angry. it's part of a trend that we had already seen but i think there'll also be is a pretty unique character. and so it's not something we see exactly like manifest itself like that. but we are going to see a lot of little trumps bumping up, coming up along the way. but he is awfully unique. he really, really, really is. and the other thing about trump to me as i do know that this is

a guy that could deal well with being in second place for a very long period of time. i don't think his ego can really take that. keep in mind he's an into this for 2 million so far. you can look up in the house and senate have a heck of a lot of people out there people that didn't make it to their that put him far more than 2 million bucks of their own money. you know, he said at one point that it would spend 100 million if necessary. well, firs first of all that jus empty as liquid enough and he can, but 100 million, do you know what that represents? obama and romney each spent $1 billion, you know, in that election. so 100 million, you know, that's more than pocket change, but i don't think you would see the republican party, republican party donors stepping behind them to kind of pick up the tab for and i do think he will have

many people jump out and pick up the tab it but if you think that we are seeing politics go for a time to a very, very different place. and that's what i think it's important that what i personally don't think that carson and trump are going to go the distance and win the republican nomination. i think that that anger that they give voice to come that they are vehicles for the anchor, i think that's real i don't under estimate that at all. that's going to carry on. the question is who's going to be the jockey rides that anger through to the finish line? and my hunch is it is not trump or carson. right over here. >> did you see any viable scenario in which the republicans lose the house? >> being the viable scenario the republicans lose the house. first of all, it's hard. i mean, it's really, really,

really hard and would take an enormous amount of effort to lose the house. because republicans, basically democrats would have to hold on to 100% of their seats and win every single republican seat that is any danger at all, 100% of those, which really, really happened -- rarely happens. and then starts knocking off people who do not appear to be vulnerable at all. edges given where people live population patterns, with the congressional district boundaries are, this is really, really hard. if you were going to tell me okay, republicans have lost the house in 2016, what happened? i would assume one of two things. trumps name is on the general election ballot, either as the republican nominee or as an independent adult think he will run as an independent. i don't know if carson would do

that or not. that, but the thing about it is republicans, i mean, i think speaker ryan does speaker boehner a lot because, well, a year or so ago, something that they get all the sharp and should out of the room. and by doing the debt ceiling and a budget deal they did remove the instruments that would be most likely for them to impale themselves. so that it's awfully hard. could get -- you never want to say never, but it's awfully, awfully awfully hard. but if i were republicans i would say can we come republicans should be worried about the damage they are doing to the franchise both internally within the house back. i mean, when i think of -- within the house of representatives. when i think of 40 something

members of the thought that paul ryan is not conservative enough, it's like wow, this is really, really interesting, and that come entity think that a month or so ago eric cantor who, yeah, he let his district it out from under that is a really, really, really smart guy, but he wrote a piece and i think it was "the wall street journal" op-ed piece where he warned conservatives of the following leaders who are misleading. and have given them, there's this pervasive view among conservatives that we were told, and i think this township late into this a little bit, we were told if we elect a republican majority to the house into the senate, that we could repeal obamacare, we could turn back all the epa regs come we could undo everything obama has done, and democrats have done, put forth our agenda and get a bunch

of things done. and the next actually speaker boehner warned of false prophets, you know, the same sort of thing. the thing is it's sort of ignores some basic civics, that you may have a majority in the house edge and have a majority in the senate, but until you vetoproof, if you don't have the president to come if you don't have a vetoproof filibuster proof majorities, you don't have that kind of control. and so these conservative voters feel, they feel like they were misled. we were promised that we could get all this done. antivenom, republican leaders, they could get all these things done and they have chosen not to. well, they didn't choose not to. they couldn't. look at the rules. look at how the place works. and that is i think the primary

source of all this, this victory vitriolic accuracy within the republican party is they think they got lied to. i think is maybe, i think they were exaggerated to where hyperbole as part of politics. inlet, put us in office and we could ask why rc. but it's a bit too literally and they feel betrayed by their leaders when their leaders exaggerated somewhat, but you couldn't do that. lsu got filibuster veto proof majorities, you can't do all these things that you guys desperately want to do. so another question in the room? >> is there a path to victory for the gop in colorado senate? busbar alex anthony says yeah,

get corey carpenter resigned from one seat to run for that one. [laughter] i think here's the challenge for republicans. number one, it's a presidential year as opposed to a midterm year so the electorate in colorado, colorado is one of the close states to being 50-yard line states out of their but it's a big difference between presidential year and midterm year, number one. number two, mark udall was from a storied family, democratic politics. but the thing is i don't think he was a natural politician. he's a really good guy. i don't think he was a natural politician. and while michael bennet is relatively speaking new to politics, wow, i think his understanding of politics and campaigns and how to win is very, very, very highly developed and i don't think he is as beautiful as udall was. finally, there's only one cory

gardner. i would say you show me another cory gardner, someone that could cut into independence, cut into moderates, who can count against the problems that the bar is facing in a teen different groups. that person could when i relaunch and so far republicans have not found someone to get. i'm pretty skeptical there. and to be perfect honest it's a different set of, very skeptical of north carolina. does the center's outreach to white male voters -- stander's outreach to white male voters with key demographics? hurt the gop with key -- well, to me, yes, bernie sanders support is overwhelmingly white, and that, by think the white males that bernie sanders is winning on board or not voters

that have been swinging generate election voters in a long time, if ever. i mean, you know, on trying to stay away from doing, talking about baubles and birkenstocks and so a lot days and things like that because i think that's not fair. but the thing about it is sanders voters, supporters are very, very passionate liberals and they are not anybody that would ever contemplate voting republican. now what interesting is, and some i don't, no, i don't, i don't think i may come if there's a path to the white house for bernie sanders, it's a subtle one and it requires republicans in some pretty exotic things themselves and thinking whole bunch of regs. it would be a long process.

yes, sir. [inaudible] >> the question that keeps popping up that i hear is what is margaritas passports how is going to win? second part, who does the revamped primary schedule most favor in your opinion? >> the upshot, a piece earlier this year, and david wasserman, a house editor has been working on some things, that it's very interesting. there are, i'm not shown supposed to, well, whatever. i don't think he has written a dissident or released it yet, but there are an enormous number of delegates to the republican convention that are not from republican district or conservative places. and keep in mind that basically every congressional district has come each one has three

delegates. there is also some bonus wants to states that have voted republican. for example, in the most republican districts, david is probably going to shoot me for doing this, in the most republican district in the country, according to david wasserman, the romney god, there were 85,672 romney votes for each count each of the three delegates from that congressional district. and i think it is new york 15 there are 1772 romney votes for republican delegate to the convention. so that there is, there is a perverse and i think, in a perverse way it is a foot, there

is a thumb on the scale for republicans that can pick up delegates and not very republican places here now, on one level he would say well, that might favor a more moderate or a less ideological republican. okay, you can make that. or maybe just one that is really, really, really smart and employs strategy in each one of these congressional districts to win the three delegates in that district, even though nobody even knows, that people who live there don't even know any republicans. but the thing about it there is a path because the delicate -- the delegate selection process on the republican side does tend to put, does give non-republican performing districts a boatload of delegates. and it's some pretty impressive numbers but i won't go any farther than that. yes, sir?

>> you haven't talked a whole lot about independence, and so my question is, number one, your general thoughts on independent and in particular could a nominee from a party be so disliked by independent study were driving to the other party rather than they are being attracted to the other parties because that's a very good point and i use, to me to independents is the best number to look at. but i also look at self-described moderates as well. and that compliment you on looking at an exit poll. like an itch on look at the right tab. -- make sure i am looking at the right tab. independents. that's a vertical.

looking for the horizontal tabs. independents blue. romney won the independent vote by a five-point margin in 2012. part of the problem is, and that is that there are more democrats self-described democrats and our self-described republicans. it's not a matter of who wins more independents of romney won the independent vote by five percentage vote, by five percentage points but among self-described moderates, obama won it by a 15-point margin. and so i kind of look at both those groups come independents and moderates. and so is there a way, obama won without winning a majority, without winning more independent vote but he did it because his party had an advantage in terms of party id. is there a danger there? you better hope like heck if you're a party is going that route, you better hope that you

are getting absolutely off the charts turnout among your members to make up for that. now, there's an argument that conservatives make that a lot of conservatives didn't vote for romney. therefore, that depressed the republican number. at the same time if he had done what it would take to check out the turnout among conservatives, to what extent might have lost the independent vote? the point is that this will exercise, you got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. you've got to be able to hold your base can get a good turnout with your base while raking in and grabbing as many votes as you possibly can from the middle, whether that's a partisan middle independents or what is the ideological middle moderate. also keep in mind that great number that they asked people

who -- actually i've got it in my other notes. that was the decisive factor in 2012. they asked him to exit polls, they asked people for factors come and which of these, which of these was most reported at which of these factors mattered most in your decision? 29% has a vision for the future. and romney won the group by a nine-point margin. the second most was shares my values are romney won that a group by 13 points. that was 27% chose the. the fourth group, and skipping over one, 18% as a strong leader. romney won the group i 23 points. but what was the other group? 21% cares about people like me come and obama won the group by a 63-point margin. so romney won three out of four, but got clobbered there.

and so that's why for a conservative, i think they key is how can i maximize the republican vote, maximize the conservative vote, but not come across as this coldhearted person who doesn't care about regular people? you know, that's why, you say how does republican do that. the engine is very carefully. i mean, you know, it's not something that just happens automatically. okay, i'm getting the hook. class question and then i get the hook. >> do you see an emergency candidate for both parties? michael bloomberg? >> well, first of all let me state my personal bias. i think it's a really, really smart guy. i think is a very good mayor of new orleans -- new york.

republican side, that would be a complete nonstarter. you can't do what he's done on guns that have a on guns that have any publican side. and even on the democratic side, i think it would be safe to say that elizabeth warren -- >> and we will eat this discussion with the charlie cook at this point to bring you live coverage of the senate. senators return from work on a measure seeking to change and obama administration rolled the with the regulation of what streams and wetlands. live coverage of the senate. giy father patrick j. conroy, the house chaplain. the house chaplain:let us pray. loving god, we give you thanks fo